FREAK WRITING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 146, 23 June 1933, Page 6

FREAK WRITING.

I wonder if any of your readers can explain the following case of freak writing? My daughter, aged ten years, is left-handed, also ambidextrous. A few months ago she collapsed at school, and the doctor who was called said it was a case of- paresis—general motor paralysis. She was taken to the hospital to be X-rayed, as brain pressure was suspected. There was nothing wrong. Since then she has suddenly discovered that she can write ordinary longhand the reverse way, so that it is necessary to hold the writing before a mirror -to make it decipherable. Her speed is equal in both styles, and when the writing is held before the mirror it appears quite as neat as her usual writing. Can an explanation of this case be found in the suggestion that one side of the brain is capable of revealing the reverse processes of the other side? S. R. HALE. [Professor A. B. Fitt, of Auckland University College, makes the following comment on the above: "The case is a rather interesting one of the combination of left-handed tendency with what is called 'mirror-writing. 5 Both the left-handed tendency and that toward 'mirror-writing' are inherited. In the case of the latter, the left-hand, or backwise, images of letters and words are dominant and refuse to be submerged by the right-hand ones. This submerging of reverse to forward forms comes automatically to most people, hence our traditional way of spelling, etc. This girl has, rather fortunately, been able to persevere both with her writing and her reading so well that she has mastered the usual procedures alongside her more .natural ones. The exact relation of the paresis (if any) to these tendencies cannot be stated without much fuller evidence. It seems possible that some change (probably,of release from a hindrance) may have taken place in certain brain-centres associated with vision."]