A Case Study of Dextral Training of a Left-Handed Boy and its Effect on Speech, Reading And Writing
- Author:
Leo Bernard Fagan, Ph.D. State University of Iowa
Charles was brought to the Clinic by his mother who explained that lie was making poor progress in school because of a reading disability and slight stuttering. He is a white American, age ten years, the younger of two siblings. The older, a female, age twelve years, is in the eighth grade accelerated one year for her chronological age and does superior work. The patient entered kindergarten at age five years, repeated grade 3B and failed his present grade 4B to repeat it this fall term. He has been somewhat of a behavior problem to his parents and teachers. In the classroom distractability and inattention have been the chief marks of his misbehavior while at home his devotion to mechanical contraptions and old automobiles has interfered with his regularity in attending family meals, punctuality in starting for school and the tidiness of his person. The father who is a graduate mechanical engineer has fostered the boy’s Mechanical interests and reports him to have scored in the superior levels in tests of mechanical ability given by the University of Iowa College of Engineering. The mother is a college graduate of high grade personality adjustment and achievement.
The psychometric tests indicate a mental age of nine years and four months on the Stanford-Binet, with a chronological age of ten years and two months, giving an Intelligence Quotient of 92. On the Stenquist Test of mechanical ability he scored in the lower 10 Per cent of the twelve year level. His performance on the Stanford Reading Test, form V, for grades 2-9, indicated a retardation of one year in word meaning and one year eight months in paragraph comprehension. His scores on the Iowa Spelling Test for the fourth grade were 54 and 75 per cent on the dictation and spelling exercises, respectively. On the Ayres’ Scale for Measuring Handwriting, Gettysburg Edition, his script was rated -20; in the two minutes allowed for this test he wrote but fifty-three characters of the Gettysburg Address and for writing the first three sentences or two hundred and eighty-five characters he took twenty-three minutes. His reading from the Gray Oral Reading Test verified his mother’s statements relative to omitting, supplying, and misreading words. He made fourteen mistakes in the first paragraph, six in the second, two in the third, eight in the fourth, three in the fifth, eight in the sixth, and ten in the seventh.
The school ratings for the second semester of the school year 1929-30, grade 4B which he failed this year, are as follows: Deportment, medium; Spelling, failed; Reading, poor; Writing, poor; Arithmetic, failed; Language, medium; Music, good; Drawing, medium. These teacher ratings give a good descriptive picture of the boy’s scholastic difficulties.
The psychometric findings indicate adequate intelligence for low average scholastic success and the probability of average achievement in mechanics if he continues in that direction under proper tutelage. His school retardation may be analyzed into the special disabilities as measured by the reading, spelling and writing tests. The physical and neurological examinations and the medical history were essentially negative. The psychiatric approach revealed the patient as a young boy driving toward normality through activity in mechanics to balance off his school failures and retardation; the affect reactions to his scholastic inferiorities have found a compensatory outlet in mechanics about which he enthuses and to which he gives much time and energy. The father has intelligently directed the boy in these activities. His speech disability has not been sufficiently severe to interfere with his classroom, playground or home activities; he does not think his speech differs from that of other boys.
The developmental and educational histories indicate the following facts: parturition and birth were normal; he began to talk at fifteen months and to walk at seventeen months of age; he was taught to read and write with his left hand by his mother beginning at age four years; he entered school at age five and was forced to write with the right hand contrary to his native tendency to use the left hand; the mother reports no affect reactions to school entrance nor to the enforced dextral usage; the symptoms of stuttering, slight in degree of severity, appeared three months later and persisted to date without abatement nor increase in severity; his oral reading began to deteriorate concomitantly with the appearance of stuttering in way of omitting, supplying and misreading words; his mother submits that his writing with the right hand after five years of penmanship is not of better quality than his left-hand writing before dextral usage was imposed.
In view of the negation of the physical, neurological examinaDEXTRAL TRAINING 293 tions, and medical history and the very obvious influence of the change in handedness on his speech, reading and writing we changed him back to the native manual expression with accessory remedial exercises to restore the original neurological patterns and functions that subserved normality in his organism.
This shift to the left hand is for all preferential major manual functions, especially for writing which may be thought of as graphic speech. In this case, as in other motor lead shift cases, the imposition of writing on the right hand has developed the latent reaction patterns of the left cerebro-cortico-neuro-muscular mechanisms basic to articulate as well as to graphic speech. The fundamental relation of these expressions of uni-lateral cortical mechanisms is demonstrated in right-handed aphasics with left cortical lesions for these neurological cases present disturbances of graphic as well as articulate speech. The neuro-physiological education in training the right hand of the left-handed tends to give the organization of the left cerebral cortex a functional dominance in motor lead that operates to reduce and oppose the natively higher functional gradients of the right cortex. Neuropathology brings out the functional prominence of the left cortex in the right-handed when uni-lateral lesions destroy the perceptual levels, affecting a central blindness in the field involved. In a cortical condition of bi-laterality of functional dominance as induced by changes in handedness the probability of inter-cortical confusion in symbol and word orientation and configuration gives rise to reading, spelling and writing disabilities as well as stuttering.
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