Döhla Diana, Willmes Klaus, Heim Stefan
Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
Department of Neurology, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2018 Nov 22;9:2006. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02006. eCollection 2018.
Developmental dysgraphia is a disorder of writing/spelling skills, closely related to developmental dyslexia. For developmental dyslexia, profiles with a focus on phonological, attentional, visual or auditory deficits have recently been established. Unlike for developmental dyslexia, however, there are only few studies about dysgraphia, in particular about the variability of its causes. Research has demonstrated high similarity between developmental dyslexia and dysgraphia. Thus, the aim of the study was to investigate cognitive deficits as potential predictors of dysgraphia, analogously to those for dyslexia, in order to identify dysgraphia profiles, depending on the particular underlying disorder. Different tests were carried out with 3rd and 4th grade school children to assess their spelling abilities, tapping into phonological processing, auditory sound discrimination, visual attention and visual magnocellular functions as well as reading. A group of 45 children with developmental dysgraphia was compared to a control group. The results showed that besides phonological processing abilities, auditory skills and visual magnocellular functions affected spelling ability, too. Consequently, by means of a two-step cluster analysis, the group of dysgraphic children could be split into two distinct clusters, one with auditory deficits and the other with deficits in visual magnocellular functions. Visual attention was also related to spelling disabilities, but had no characteristic distinguishing effect for the two clusters. Together, these findings demonstrate that a more fine-grained diagnostic view on developmental dysgraphia, which takes the underlying cognitive profiles into account, might be advantageous for optimizing the outcome of individuum-centered intervention programs.
发育性书写障碍是一种书写/拼写技能的障碍，与发育性阅读障碍密切相关。对于发育性阅读障碍，最近已经确立了侧重于语音、注意力、视觉或听觉缺陷的特征。然而，与发育性阅读障碍不同的是，关于书写障碍的研究很少，尤其是关于其病因的变异性。研究表明，发育性阅读障碍和书写障碍之间有高度相似性。因此，该研究的目的是类似于对阅读障碍的研究，调查认知缺陷作为书写障碍的潜在预测因素，以便根据特定的潜在障碍识别书写障碍特征。对三年级和四年级小学生进行了不同测试，以评估他们的拼写能力、语音处理能力、听觉声音辨别能力、视觉注意力和视觉大细胞功能以及阅读能力。将一组45名患有发育性书写障碍的儿童与一个对照组进行比较。结果表明，除了语音处理能力外，听觉技能和视觉大细胞功能也影响拼写能力。因此，通过两步聚类分析，书写障碍儿童组可以分为两个不同的类别，一类有听觉缺陷，另一类有视觉大细胞功能缺陷。视觉注意力也与拼写障碍有关，但对这两个类别没有特征性的区分作用。总之，这些发现表明，一种更细致的关于发育性书写障碍的诊断观点，即考虑到潜在的认知特征，可能有利于优化以个体为中心的干预项目的效果。
