DYSORTHOGRAPHY: SYMPTOMS, TYPES, CAUSES AND TREATMENTS - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The dysorthography is a disorder of the language of the same family of disorders that dyslexia. However, this specific disorder mainly affects writing, with people who suffer from it being unable to write words in an appropriate spelling manner.

A text written by a person with dysortography will be full of various grammatical mistakes and errors, which are made repeatedly and whose explanation has nothing to do with the intellectual abilities of the person. One of the most typical errors of a person with dysorthography is forgetting some letters within a word.

They also tend to have an incorrect diacritical mark, confusion of some sounds when writing or the incorrect application of grammar rules.

Despite the fact that there is still no consensus on the best way to treat this disorder, in recent decades treatments have been developed to minimize its negative effects.

Symptoms

Until the introduction of DSM-V (the most recent handbook of psychological disorders), dysorthography was not differentiated in academic circles from other developmental problems such as dysgraphia.

However, thanks to the new classification, today we can diagnose dysorthography as a language disorder independent of the rest. In this section we will see in more detail what its main symptoms are.

Deficit in the knowledge and use of spelling rules

The main symptom that a person with dysorthography presents is the difficulty to understand and use the proper spelling of their language.

People with this disorder make mistakes when writing words, either in minor aspects such as accents or more serious, such as the letters they are made of.

Reading deficit

Because they are not fluent in writing or spelling, people with dysorthography have trouble reading a text.

Depending on the severity of their symptoms, they may be unable to understand the words in front of them.

Slowness when writing

Because they do not master the rules of writing well, children with dysorthography are not able to improve in this field.

While other people increase their writing speed over the years, those with this disorder will continue to maintain a very slow pace unless they receive treatment.

Confusion in converting phonemes to graphemes

Some of the sounds in each language have very similar pronunciation. Therefore, one of the most important tasks of a person who is learning to write is to distinguish them in order to represent them properly in a text.

However, the person with dysorthography may not be able to transform phonemes to graphemes properly.

Types

Dysorthography is a specific language disorder that belongs to a larger group of reading and writing difficulties known as "dysgraphia."

However, it is also possible to divide dysorthography into several types based on what symptoms are present, as well as their severity.

Basically, we can distinguish between two main types of disortography: natural disortography and arbitrary disortography.

Natural dysorthography

Dysorthography is considered of a natural type when it mainly affects phonological development; that is to say, the inability of the person to spell a word and to discover what phonemes it is made of.

On the other hand, it may also have to do with the phoneme-to-grapheme conversion rules. A person with this symptom would confuse the way of representing some phonemes in writing, for example changing a "v" for a "b".

Arbitrary dysorthography

On the other hand, arbitrary type disortography mainly affects the knowledge and application of spelling rules in written expression.

A person with this variant of the disorder may have problems in various fields of writing, from the use of accents to the correct representation of each word.

Causes

As in the case of other specific language disorders such as dyslexia, the causes of the appearance of dysortography can be multiple. We will see some of these below.

Incorrect learning of the rules of writing

The use of some methods used to teach reading and writing has been shown to cause students to develop language disorders later in life.

Although most of these methods are no longer used, people who were exposed to them may still have symptoms related to their use.

Brain disorder

Some of the people with symptoms of dysorthography have developmental problems in some of the brain areas related to language.

This can be due to genetic or environmental factors, such as a head injury or stroke.

Intellectual problems

Some intellectual problems can cause a person to develop dysorthography. Some of the most related to this disorder are the following:

- Low IQ.

- Problems in visual perception.

- Deficiencies in space-time perception.

Treatments

As with all other specific language disorders, people with dysorthography need to receive treatment as soon as possible in order to overcome their symptoms.

Once a good diagnosis has been made to learn more about the specific problems experienced by the person, the psychologist or educator in charge of the case must design a specific action plan for the patient.

In the case of dysorthography, some of the actions that can be carried out to improve the symptoms can range from repeated practice of the rules of writing and spelling, to teaching tricks and techniques to remember the written form of words most used of the language.

On the other hand, while the treatment is being carried out, if the patient is in a situation in which his disorder causes him great harm (as in the case of a student), palliative remedies can be applied, such as audio recording of the lessons or the substitution of the written exams for others of an oral nature.

References

1. "Disorder of written expression" in: Psychodiagnosis. Retrieved on: April 21, 2018 from psychodiagnosis: psicodiagnosis.es.
2. "Dysorthography" in: Pensare Oltre. Retrieved on: April 21, 2018 from Pensare Oltre: pensareoltre.org.
3. "What is disorthography?" in: Laterality. Retrieved on: April 21, 2018 from Lateralidad: lateralidad.com.
4. "What is disortography - Symptoms and treatments" in: Universo Curioso. Retrieved on: April 21, 2018 from Universo Curioso: icesi.edu.co.
5. "Dysorthography" in: Wikipedia. Retrieved on: April 21, 2018 from Wikipedia: es.wikipedia.org.