What Causes Dysgraphia?

A few people with dysgraphia lack only the fine-motor coordination to produce legible handwriting, but some may have a physical tremor that interferes with writing.  In most cases, however, several brain systems interact to produce dysgraphia.  Some experts believe that dysgraphia involves a dysfunction in the interaction between the two main brain systems that allows a person to translate mental into written langauge (phoneme-to-grapheme translation, i.e. Sound to symbol, and lexicon-to-grapheme translation, i.e. mental to written word).  Other studies have shown that split attention, memory load, and familiarity of graphic material affect writing ability.  Typically, a person with illegible handwriting has a combination of fine-motor difficulty, inability to revisulize letters, and inability to remember the motor patterns of letter forms

Reprinted with permission