Characteristics of dyslexia and dysgraphia in a Chinese patient with semantic dementia

Abstract

We describe a 44-year-old Chinese-speaking patient with semantic dementia (SD), who demonstrates dyslexia and dysgraphia. The man was administered a series of neuropsychological inspections, including general language tests and reading and writing examinations. The patient demonstrated surface dyslexia when reading single Chinese characters aloud. While most writing errors demonstrated by the patient were orthographically similar errors and noncharacter responses, such as pictograph, logographeme, and stroke errors, rather than phonologically plausible errors that were homophonous or different only in tone from the targets. We suggest that the type of acquired dysgraphia demonstrated by Chinese-speaking SD patients is determined by the unique features of the Chinese writing system.

Keywords:

• semantic dementia
• dyslexia
• dysgraphia
• Chinese characters