Looking for a mid-tech tool for your clients with agraphia? Check out electronic spellers! ✍🏼 ⌨️
When trying to correctly spell a word, electronic spellers are typically programmed to look for correct spellings that best match the 𝗽𝗵𝗼𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰 spelling of what your client just wrote (searching for words that 𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 similar) 👂
This is different than the default spell check that is installed on most computer word processors, which are programmed to find 𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝗶𝗰 spellings (searching for words that 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 similar) 👀
Agraphia Treatment: Sentence-Level Treatment
Agraphia Assessment: Sentence-Level Assessment
The Neuroscience of Writing
What areas of the brain have been associated with agraphia when lesioned? 🧠 💥
Writing is a complex process, with 𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗬 areas of the brain playing a role. This results in large neural networks responsible for the writing process ✍🏼
That being said, the traditional agraphia classifications do have lesion sites that are associated with them.
Assistive Technology: Speech-to-Text Software
What kinds of technology supports are available to people with agraphia? ✍🏼 💻
𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗰𝗵-𝘁𝗼-𝗧𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 allows spoken material captured by a microphone/headset to be transcribed into text for computer programs. 🎙
Though many softwares exist, here are some popular options that you may consider looking into for your clients.
Combined Lexical and Sublexical Treatment
In order to correctly write a word, there are a LOT of steps involved 🧩
Therefore, for many people with agraphia there is no one single cause for their writing problems. Rather, there are a variety of language processing components that are compromised and result in difficulty writing single words. ✍🏼
𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗟𝗲𝘅𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘅𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 (Johnson, Ross & Kiran, 2017) is designed to target ALL aspects of written word processing. 👊🏼
Agraphia Treatment: Single Word-Level Treatments
What are your go-to treatment approaches for writing at the single word-level? 📝
Though the specific treatment technique used will depend on your client’s individual needs, it’s helpful to be familiar with a variety of approaches so that you’ll always be ready to go at a moment’s notice! 🙌🏼👊🏼
Here are 3 different approaches that you’ll want to have in your clinical toolbox:
Agraphia Classifications
Agraphia Assessment: Single-Word Assessment
When assessing for agraphia at the single word-level, what are you looking for? 🕵️♂️
Written language is complicated, and there are lots of factors that go into understanding the difference between why a client may write COW for “horse” or spell SIGHKIK for “psychic” 🐄 🔮
Here are some linguistic variables you’ll want to pay close attention to when assessing agraphia at the single word-level: