Intransigent vowel-consonant position in Korean dysgraphia: evidence of spatial-constructive representation

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.