title: Intransigent vowel-consonant position in Korean dysgraphia: evidence of spatial-constructive representation.
abstract: Dysgraphia due to a focal brain lesion can be characterized by substitution, transposition, deletion and/or addition errors of graphemes or strokes. However, those linguistic errors can be language-specific because the writing system of a given language may influence error patterns. We investigated a Korean stroke patient, a 57-year-old English teacher with dysgraphia both in Korean Han-geul [see text] and in English alphabet writings. The results of an experimental testing revealed transposition errors between a consonant and a vowel only in English but not in Korean writings. This austerity of vowel-consonant position may be attributed to a unique Korean writing system of a spatially well-formed syllabic configuration or block with consonant(s) and a vowel. In light of a neuropsychological model of writing, which depicts a multi-level spelling and writing process, we suggest a spatial-constructional component of internal orthographic representations in Korean writing. This Korean graphemic configuration feature may be resistant to a focal, left cerebral damage, and thus, we also discuss our results in terms of cerebral lateralization of the writing processes.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Program in Speech and Language Pathology, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. h.kim@yonsei.ac.kr
authors.forename: HyangHee
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Duk L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Na
authors.forename: Eun Sook
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: Park
mesh_terms: D000381:Agraphia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000208:ethnology / Q000209:etiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D004411:Dyslexia, Acquired / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D020244:Infarction, Middle Cerebral Artery / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology; D007723:Korea; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008959:Models, Neurological; D019303:Multilingualism; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010700:Phonetics; D013028:Space Perception