93% of these cases are due to damage to the left hemisphere and the need to use the non-dominant left hand due to motor involvement of the right hand, as confirmed by neuropsychologists from the University of Edinburgh. It can also appear after having a stroke, although in these cases it is usually transient. In fact, specialists from the Department of Neurology of the Beijing Hospital propose that the appearance of mirror writing in the elderly should be considered as a factor that predicts a subsequent cognitive decline. Specular writing has been seen in people with schizophrenia, multiple personality, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Mirror writing in adultsĪlthough mirror writing may be normal in the first years of life, when it appears in adulthood it is usually a symptom of brain injury in the dominant hemisphere. This idea would not be entirely crazy since it has been proven in cases of synesthesia, although for the moment it is still only a hypothesis. These researchers hypothesize that there could be a gene that intervenes in the organization of language centers in the brain, that would also be responsible for mirror writing. The funny thing was that the children of these people also had mirror writing and almost all of them were left-handed. So they found 10 adults who had mirror writing and were able to read it fluently. Obviously, the text was written specularly. These psychologists placed an Aesop fable in the local newspaper and requested that anyone who was able to read it in less than a minute contact them. Is mirror writing hereditary?Īustralian researchers have recently hypothesized that mirror writing could be an inherited condition. With a little extra help this “problem” is quickly resolved. Therefore, although mirror writing is not evident in all children, it is not a systematic phenomenon It can be said that it is a normal phase that some children go through when they learn to write. Recent studies at Harvard University and the University of Lorraine have found no significant difference in intelligence between children of the same age who write normally and those who write specularly. In any case, it is important to keep in mind that mirror writing is not usually an indicator of slower intellectual development, as was thought in the past. However, these problems should normally have been overcome by the age of seven. Some don’t just invert certain characters, but invert entire words or sentences. In this way he will understand the symmetries between particularly complex letter pairs such as “b-d” with changes to the right and left or the letters “b-p” with changes up and down.Īt the age of 5 or 6 years some children have difficulty perceiving these symmetries, so they usually turn the letters isolated since they do not properly perceive the differences between them. When the child learns to read and write his visual system must be mature enough to perceive the symmetries between letters and at the same time must have developed a basic system of spatial orientation. Although obviously, it is advisable to keep an eye on the further development of reading. In fact, most children pass the mirror writing phase without major difficulties. Therefore, it is not surprising that children have to go through a training period before understanding this direction and incorporating it into their writing. It is worth clarifying that the most natural direction left-handed people take to write would be from right to left (just contrary to people with right sides and our writing system). However, sometimes the little ones show a crossed laterality or a left-handed laterality. The school stage is a crucial period to establish laterality as children begin to show a greater preference for the use of one hand or the other. The two reasons why children write in the mirror This way of writing is even more impressive when the letters are in italics. Horizontal specular writing is the most common, but there are also cases of vertical specular writing, which only looks correct if we look at the numbers or letters by placing a mirror above or below it. In fact, the characters are correct when looking at themselves in a mirror. Mirror writing, or specular writing, refers to the tendency to write letters or numbers (even whole words or paragraphs) in reverse, as if reflected in a mirror. The term “mirror writing” (Spiegelschrift) was introduced by Buchwald to refer to writing that runs in a direction opposite to normal in which the individual letters are also reversed. Although we tend to see mirror writing as a clumsiness or a problem that scares many parents, it is actually an extraordinary “feat” since it is very difficult to write backwards, especially whole words or phrases. Mirror writing is a very old and relatively common phenomenon in children, left-handed people, and right-to-left languages.
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