Writing

WRITING from a physiological viewpoint, along with spoken speech, belongs to the expressive component of the speech mechanism. Analysis of W. is an objective method for studying personality in its normal and pathological states. Psychoneurology in its broadest scope utilizes this method. The act of W. is carried out by two subordinate processes: associative (the activity of associative speech and writing 'mechanisms' in the cerebral cortex) and psychomotor (processes occurring in the sensory-motor centers or in their¹ conductors leading to the muscular apparatus of the writing extremity). In pathological changes of personality, speech with all its components becomes part of the symptomatology of diseases (pathography). With the progress in the doctrine of central localizations of speech functions (see Agraphia, Aphasia, Brain), the symptomatology of W. disorders acquires the significance of a valuable diagnostic method for differentiating clinical forms of aphasia (so-called cortical, subcortical, and transcortical). Disorders of W. in its various forms (voluntary, writing from dictation, and copying) are encountered in all the mentioned forms of aphasia, creating through their participation in combinations with other types of speech disorders demonstrative schemes. The table below clearly illustrates what has been said: Type of speech disorders Forms of motor aphasia cortical sub- transcortical cortical Understanding of others' speech . . Voluntary speech . . Voluntary writing . . Writing from dictation . . + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Analysis of the table makes it obvious that in differentiating so-called cortical and subcortical aphasia, the determining feature is writing, since only disorders of various types of writing do not coincide in both forms. Lit.: Feofanov M., Psychology of Writing, M., 1930. See also literature for the articles Graphology and Handwriting. A. Surkov.