What Is Mirror Writing A Sign Of?

Is Mirror Writing a Normal Phenomenon for Some?

Teaching children to read and write is one of the primary goals of instruction in the U.S. elementary school classrooms. Reading and writing are linguistic skills and thus build on basic linguistic knowledge. The role of phonological knowledge (e.g., attending to and manipulating sounds within words) and orthographic knowledge (e.g., processing written letters and letter patterns) in reading and spelling performance has been well documented. However, letter-sound mappings do not provide a complete account of English spelling, and therefore such linguistic knowledge may not be all that children need to learn to be successful readers and writers.

A very interesting phenomenon in linguistic study is mirror writing. Mirror writing is unusual as it is sometimes executed by entirely normal people, and at other times is only seen in the wake of a variety of neurological disorders. It is an unusual script, in which the writing runs in the opposite direction to normal, with individual letters reversed, so that it is most easily read using a mirror. This writing is seen in healthy individuals; it is also associated with various lesions that most commonly involve the left hemisphere.

Very occasionally mirror writing is accompanied by mirror reading. Although consistent mirror reading is exceptionally uncommon, rare cases of mirror reading (i.e., reading of mirrored letters) and reversed reading (i.e., reading letters or words backwards) have been reported.

When does mirror writing occur?

Normal children often go through a stage of mirroring of at least certain letters, especially reversible letters such as b and d, during the scribbling period and early stages of learning to write, mainly between the ages of 3 and 7 years. The child often does not appreciate the mirror form of writing because he or she cannot read it. It is important for all parents and teachers to be aware that mirror writing is a normal possibility in a child's development and may not imply dysfunction.

On the other hand, over a century ago it was observed that children with learning disabilities and mental challenges often mirror wrote, and many of these children were left handed. It was observed that certain children with selective difficulties in reading often had matching writing difficulties. Many of these children with developmental dyslexia had normal or indeed superior abilities in other cognitive domains. Whether people with dyslexia have an increased mirror‐writing tendency still remains controversial.

A crucial issue is the relation between mirror writing when copying and mirror writing when writing from memory (under dictation). Various researches indicate that mirror writing is very frequent when writing from memory but virtually absent when writing (or drawing) by copying. This supports the idea that mirror writing by young children is a memory-related phenomenon rather than a perception-based phenomenon.

As researchers has described, mirror writing is usually considered as a motor phenomenon rather than a cognitive issue. Although mirror writing may occur in association with immaturity, ageing, dementia, learning disabilities and various not-so-clear forms of cognitive impairment, but none of these conditions is sufficient or necessary for mirror writing to occur.

What can we do to correct mirror writing?

As I mentioned before, mirror writing is more a motor and memory related phenomenon and therefore we can use some situational constraints that favor correct writing. These tools and techniques include:

Posting on walls displays of how the letters and digits are written, so children can look at the displays when they are uncertain how to write a character.
Placing an obvious dot on the left of the page to indicate where to start writing when children have to write on a blank sheet of paper.
When they did mirror writing, ask them to read the words loudly, help them to realize the problem and correct it.
Mirror writing is almost always an age related issue, especially in healthy situation, so encourage children to write the words correctly.
Mirror writing occurs more often in the stressful situations; therefore try to avoid things that make such conditions. Most importantly, avoid punishment!