Is It Common for a Toddler to Read Right to Left Instead of Left to Right

Robert D. McIntosh and Sergio Della Sala explore some intriguing phenomena

Mirror-writing is the product of messages, words or sentences in reverse direction, then that they look normal when viewed in a mirror. Some people may mirror-write intentionally; just unintentional mirror-writing is surprisingly mutual amongst immature children, and in encephalon-damaged adults. Unintentional mirror-writing suggests a tension betwixt a tendency for our brains to treat mirror-images as equivalent, and a culturally imposed demand to distinguish between them for written language. This commodity explores the various manifestations of mirror-writing, and the ideas put forrard to account for it.

Flick yourself in a taxi on a common cold, rainy 24-hour interval, condensation on the windows. You want to write 'adieu-cheerio' to your girl waving at you from the house. In order to be read past her, you would demand to write in reverse on the within of the window, transforming your habitual writing actions to do and then. This is 'mirror-writing' – reversed writing that looks normal when viewed in a mirror; like the sign on the front of an ambulance. Since Western scripts typically run from left to right, this reversed course is also known every bit levography (Critchley, 1928) or sinistrad writing (Streifler & Hofman, 1976).

Mirror-writing is striking and mysterious. It has been practised deliberately by some notable individuals, most famously Leonardo da Vinci, and portrayed to powerful effect in literature and visual art (see Box, right). Mirror-writing is of special involvement to psychologists because it can sometimes arise in people trying to write commonly. For example, unusual writing demands can sometimes mislead the states into writing backwards. If nosotros write onto paper pressed against the underside of a tabular array, or against our forehead (Critchley, 1928), we may fail to transform our actions to compensate for the altered plane of performance, and our writing may come out mirror-reversed. Mirror-writing is likewise common amongst children learning to write, and is noted in adults post-obit brain damage, usually to the left hemisphere.

But what exercise these phenomena tell us nigh our brains? Do nosotros each harbour a latent looking-glass world, poised to usurp the everyday given the right conditions? Is mirror-writing after encephalon damage a recurrence of the childhood class, or different? More than a century of sporadic scientific literature, and some of our own recent observations, suggest answers to these tantalising questions.

Explanations of mirror-writing

Does mirror-writing imply reversed perceptions, or is it only that the action comes out astern? This captures the dichotomy between perceptual and motor explanations of mirror-writing, from the classical literature to the present 24-hour interval. On the perceptual side, Orton (1928) suggested that, for every word or object we recognise, an engram is stored in the dominant (left) hemisphere, and its mirror-image in the non-dominant hemisphere. Mirrored-forms sally in children, due to incompletely established hemispheric dominance, just are suppressed in adults unless released by left-hemisphere damage. Subsequent perceptual accounts, such equally the spatial disorientation hypothesis (Heilman et al., 1980), share the core idea that mirror-writing is one aspect of a more general mirror-confusion. Perceptual explanations predict that mirror-writing should exist associated with perceptual confusion, and even with fluent reading of reversed text. And if the mirroring arises at a perceptual level, then mirror-writing should sally regardless of which hand is used.

On the motor side are those who argue that action representations are critical to mirror-writing (e.grand. Chan & Ross, 1988; Erlenmeyer, 1879, cited in Critchley, 1928). The basic insight is that learned actions are represented in a trunk-relative scheme, not in external spatial coordinates. Thus, for a right-handed Westerner, the habitual writing direction is not left-to-right per se, just abductively outwards from the body midline. If executed by the unaccustomed left hand, this abductive action will flow right-to-left, unless it is transformed into an adductive inward action, much as nosotros demand to transform our activity when writing on a window for a reader on the other side. On this view, children might mirror-write with either hand if they accept yet to learn a consequent direction, but literate adults should practise so but when attempting to write with the left manus whilst cognitively dumb or distracted, so that the required transformation is omitted. Since perceptual factors play no explanatory role, motor accounts predict that mirror-writing should not entail perceptual confusions or mirror-reading.

Of course, perceptual and motor accounts need not be mutually sectional: the manifestations of mirror-writing may exist too various for any unitary business relationship (Critchley, 1928; merely see Della Sala & Cubelli, 2007). As we shall see, the facts favour a motor interpretation in most cases; but there are possible exceptions, and interesting nuances to the story, every bit well as some unresolved puzzles.

Spontaneous mirror-writing in children
As whatsoever nursery or principal teacher knows, mirror-writing is very common amid children learning to write. These productions are not mere confusions of legal mirror-image characters (such as 'b' and 'd') but tin can involve the reversal of any graphic symbol, and even whole words and phrases. A kid may sign her name neatly simply dorsum-to-front. Interestingly, some characters are more likely to exist reversed than others, specially those such every bit '3' or 'J' in which the correct class 'faces' leftwards. This suggests that during exposure to written language, the child implicitly extracts the statistical regularity that about characters 'face' to the right, then over-applies this 'right-writing rule' (Fischer, 2011).

Several myths surrounding mirror-writing in children should exist dispelled. Near prominent is the traditionally causeless association with wearisome intellectual development, arising from early anecdotal literature (e.yard. Orton, 1928) and studies of 'mentally lacking' children (Gordon, 1920), and propounded as a visual motif through popular works (e.thousand. Winnie-the-Pooh, the Far Side cartoons). Recent studies have converged in showing that the likelihood of mirror writing does not correlate with intellectual abilities. Cubelli and Della Sala (2009), for example, reported no significant divergence in intelligence between mirror-writing and non-mirror-writing children of the same historic period (cf. Fischer & Tazouti, 2011). There is similarly little truth in the idea that mirror-writing is more common in left-handers. Mirror-writing in childhood does of course correlate with age, just the true underlying factor here is the stage of acquisition of writing, with occasional mirror-writing every bit an intermediate stage betwixt no writing and correct writing (Della Sala & Cubelli, 2009; Fischer & Tazouti, 2011).

Situational factors further attune the likelihood of mirror-writing at whatever given moment. For instance, children show sequential biases, tending to face each character in the same direction every bit the preceding i. An example from Fischer (2011) concerns the character pair 'C3', equally written by 300 five-to-six-yr one-time children: the probability of mirror-writing the '3' was far greater (0.73 vs. 0.10) if the 'C' had been correctly written (i.e. right-facing) than if it had been mirror-written (i.e. left-facing). Spatial constraints are likewise important, and children as old as seven may write their name backwards if required to get-go from a point on the folio that leaves inadequate space to write it frontwards (Cornell, 1985; Fischer & Tazouti, 2011). That a simple spatial restriction can elicit mirrored script suggests a ascendant function for motor factors, rather than perceptual confusion. Consequent with this, Della Sala and Cubelli (2009) found that the frequency of mirror-writing was no higher amid children who had difficulty discriminating mirror images than among those who did non. Doubt almost how messages should expect does not seem to bulldoze mirror-writing in children.

Rather, babyhood mirror-writing may tell us something virtually how writing actions develop. Specifically, information technology implies that the general shape of a letter is learned more rapidly than the direction for writing it. The key to understanding this may be to regard mirror-writing non as intrinsically errorful, just as a feat of activity generalisation. It is a neat play a trick on for a kid to produce a perfect mirrored-form, which they have never been taught, as readily as the correct form that they take been shown repeatedly. For about actions, this mirror-generalisation would be useful, because anything that we practice i style may need to be done in reverse at another fourth dimension; we do non learn separately to plow a tap clockwise and anticlockwise, simply to plow the tap. Writing, however, belongs to an unusual, evolutionarily recent, grade of deportment that have a culturally set directionality, and for which this generalisation is unhelpful. Acquiring the correct direction for writing in one'southward culture may be a matter of stamping out the unwanted alternative after having learned the general shape of the activeness.

Involuntary mirror-writing after brain damage
Children grow out of mirror writing, only in some adults it makes an unexpected return. Mirror-writing is quite mutual post-obit stroke, though usually transient. Frequency estimates vary from two.v per cent (Gottfried et al., 2003) to 13 per cent (Tashiro et al., 1987), but are much higher (24 per cent) if simply left hemisphere lesions are considered (Wang, 1992).

A review of single cases confirmed that mirror-writing post-obit stroke is overwhelmingly associated with damage to the left hemisphere (93 per cent) and with employ of the non-dominant left manus (97 per cent) (Balfour et al., 2007). The prototypical adult mirror-writer is a right-hander who loses right-arm motor function post-obit left-hemisphere stroke, being forced to write with the left hand.

Given this profile, could the strong association of mirror-writing with left-hemisphere damage exist an artefact of forced left-paw use? Would mirror-writing be elicited in other groups simply by requesting writing with the left hand? When this tactic was tried, it yielded mirror-writing rates that did not differ statistically between right- and left-hemisphere damaged people (14 per cent of 36 cases vs. 20 per cent of l cases) (Balfour et al., 2007). Even amongst 86 healthy controls, writing with the left hand produced at least some reversals in 7 per cent of people; merely writing with the right manus never did.

These results fit the motor hypothesis, co-ordinate to which involuntary mirror-writing in adults reflects left-handed execution of a right-hand activity, without motor transformation. The transformation requires cognitive resource, so would exist susceptible to attentional lapses, and especially vulnerable subsequently brain damage. We must stress that the sporadic reversals obtained by asking brain-damaged people to write with the left manus are of a unlike order of severity from florid clinical cases, which may involve consequent reversal of words, multi-digit numbers and sentences (see Della Sala & Cubelli, 2007). To fully business relationship for severe and persistent mirror-writing may crave more pervasive cognitive insufficiencies, perhaps combined with anosognosia (lack of insight) or anosodiaphoria (lack of concern) (e.chiliad. Angelillo et al., 2010).

So, children may mirror-write because they are unsure of the correct direction, whilst adults retain the correct (abductive) management, but fail to change this motor addiction for the unaccustomed hand. However, an alternative motor account, which relates involuntary mirror-writing more than closely to the childhood course, has been advanced by Della Sala and Cubelli (2007). This 'directional apraxia' hypothesis proposes that involuntary mirror-writing reflects loss of knowledge of the direction of learned actions, with execution instead governed by a preference for abductive movements. This implies that the management of an action is not only acquired later than its shape, but represented separately, and vulnerable separately to damage. It is not articulate whether this business relationship improves on the standard motor account in explaining documented cases of mirror-writing, but further information on the influence of linguistic communication and handedness may prove decisive. Directional apraxia predicts that mirror-writing should affect the left hand for rightward scripts such as English, simply the right hand for leftward scripts such every bit Hebrew or Arabic, regardless of the writer'southward handedness. There is one report, which fits this prediction exactly, of a man who mirror-wrote in Hebrew but not in French with his correct manus, yet produced the contrary design – mirror writing in French but not in Hebrew – with his left hand. Nonetheless, the observation is anecdotal (Marinesco, cited by Russell, 1900), and requires replication.

The role of mirror-perceptions
Mirror-writing does not entail an reward for reading mirrored text; a fact that considerably bolsters a motor business relationship (Critchley, 1928). But analogous phenomena can bear upon perception. Parietal lobe impairment can induce an disability to tell apart mirror-images, even though subtle changes in shape or rotation are spotted (Davidoff & Warrington, 2001; Turnbull & McCarthy, 1996). Such mirror-confusions sometimes co-occur with mirror-writing (Durwen & Linke, 1988; Heilman et al., 1980; Wade & Hart, 1991). In other cases, perception may be systematically reversed, yielding fluent mirror-reading (Gottfried et al., 2003; Lambon-Ralph et al., 1997; Pflugshaupt et al., 2007). If these people also mirror-write, it may exist deliberate, and some country that they do then in order to be able to read what they write. However, the well-nigh unusual report is of a polyglot adult female who, following a concussion, mirror-read and wrote her first language, Hebrew (a right–left script), but not Smoothen or German (left–correct scripts) (Streifler & Hofman, 1976). Her mirror-writing was manifestly involuntary, affecting the ascendant right paw (the left paw was not tested); and she displayed a range of other reversals, perceptual and conceptual (defoliation of opposites like inside/outside, above/below). The language-specificity of her mirror-reversals is challenging to explain, but the tight parallel between her reading and writing suggests that involuntary mirror-writing can take a perceptual (or conceptual) footing in some cases.

Similar mirror-writing, acquired mirror-reading recalls the errors of babyhood; and, equally for writing, perceptual confusions in children may reflect a broadly advantageous mirror-generalisation. In nature, mirror-images are invariably two instances or views of the same thing, then it is efficient to represent them as equivalent. On the other manus, we sometimes demand to distinguish mirror-forms, and nowhere is this more vital than in decoding written language. Functional neuroimaging suggests that a region of the left midfusiform gyrus (the 'visual discussion course expanse') may be critical to mirror-discrimination in reading (Dehaene et al., 2010; Pegado et al., 2011). The development of this chapters presumably suppresses mirror-reading errors during learning.

Deliberate mirror-writing
Writing in Encephalon in 1896, F.J. Allen, a neurologically healthy Professor of Physiology, recorded his subjective experience of fluent left-handed mirror-writing, speculating that the power may not be rare, just rarely practised. He proposed that 'mirror-writing is oftentimes a symptom of nervus disease; but the disease need not be the crusade of the existence of the kinesthesia, just but the cause of its discovery' (p.385). As already noted, mirror-writing is adopted deliberately past some brain-damaged people with reversed perceptions. It is too cultivated past some healthy, albeit unusual, people; often to a high level of skill. Historic practitioners include Lewis Carroll, who experimented with spatial besides as logical inversions, and was a skilled mirror-writer. Among the 100,000 letters that he wrote were a serial of 'looking glass messages, designed to exist read in a mirror. Mirror-writing also appears in his stories and poems. In Through the Looking-Glass ane of Alice'southward first discoveries is a book printed in mirror-script. In that location was besides Leonardo da Vinci, who wrote thousands of pages of his notebooks in mirrored script, with his left hand. Could deliberate mirror-writing offer insight into the nature of involuntary mirror-writing in brain-damaged adults?

We take recently had the chance to address this effect with Kasimir Bordihn (KB), a German language creative person, who has practised diverse forms of mirror-writing for more than 50 years. KB is a natural left-hander, schooled to write with the right paw, who 'discovered' mirror-writing aged nine, finding that he could halve his time writing lines by writing forward with his right hand and simultaneously backward with his left. He later practised and extended this technique, writing forward or backward with either hand, including vertical besides as horizontal flips, and incorporating these into a distinctive 'mirror-fine art' (see encompass). We accept begun a instance study of KB's abilities, which is providing clear support for the motor hypothesis of mirror-writing, and some less expected results.

First, whilst KB writes skilfully in a number of different directions, his most fluent form, and the only non-standard form that closely resembles his normal forward right-handed script, is horizontal mirror-writing produced with his left hand. This special condition is consistent with the view that left-handed mirror-writing reflects the untransformed execution of a learned correct-hand action. Second, when writing with both easily, his performance is far better if his hands move mirror-symmetrically to produce opposite scripts, than if they move in tandem to produce similar scripts. It is the motor and non the perceptual congruence that counts. Third, as with most involuntary mirror-writers, KB'south versatility with a pen confers no perceptual benefit: he is equally baffled by mirrored text as any other reader. These characteristics match a motor business relationship of mirror-writing.

As well every bit asking KB to read mirrored text out loud, we assessed his recognition of reflected letters past psychophysical means, finding nada unusual. Simply when instead we asked KB to discriminate pictures of left and right hands, he showed a consequent inability, performing dramatically worse than matched controls, and on one occasion faring no meliorate than chance. This was non a full general problem with torso parts, as he could discriminate the laterality of feet very well; and information technology was not due to rushed decision making, as his hand discriminations were both dull and inaccurate. Rather, KB revealed a specific damage for the discrimination of left and right hands.

This body-part identification task is used widely as a test of motor imagery. People solve this task past mentally rotating their own hands or feet to confirm a match to the viewed picture (Parsons, 1987, 1994). 1 possible interpretation of KB'due south issue is that his unusual facility for (and/or history of) executing right-hand actions with the left may entail an abnormal degree of overlap in the neural motor representations of the hands. He may thus rotate his hands mentally to match the flick, yet neglect to identify introspectively which hand has made the match. This is a highly preliminary suggestion, but the observation is certainly intriguing. One more flippant implication might exist that Leonardo da Vinci, for all of his genius, may take had more than trouble than the average Renaissance man in telling his left hand from his right.

Final reflections
As children, we make mirror-errors in reading and writing. These perceptual and motor confusions are not tightly linked, simply arise from parallel strategies of mirror-generalisation in perception and action. If we and so acquire to write with our correct mitt, mirror-writing may be the latent natural script of our left, and vice-versa, requiring only certain circumstances to sally.

Mirror-writing in its various forms – spontaneous, involuntary and deliberate – has long fascinated observers in fine art and science. Beyond its obvious curiosity value, it provides compelling insights into how nosotros larn virtually, and stand for the world and our actions within it. The story is intriguing, all the same incomplete. We retrieve there volition exist more than to larn about ourselves in this particular looking-glass.

Box

Mirror-writing has also been portrayed in films:
in Christopher Nolan's Memento, the 'facts' are tattooed on Leonard'southward chest in mirror-writing so that he can read their reflection; in Stanley Kubrik'south The Shining, Danny writes REDRUM on the door, which is MURDER backwards (Maggie does the same with her toy blocks in the Simpsons episode Reality Bites). Mirror-writing as well features in the Simpsons episode 'Brother from the aforementioned planet'; the Scooby-Doo episode 'Mystery mask mix-up'; The 25th Hour; Alvin and the Chipmunks; and Flowers for Algernon. For further examples, run across Della Sala and Cubelli (2009).

Robert D. McIntosh
is at Human Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, University of Edinburgh
[e-mail protected]

Sergio Della Sala
is at Human being Cerebral Neuroscience, Psychology, University of Edinburgh
[electronic mail protected]

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Source: https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-25/edition-10/mirror-writing

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