Affiliations: The National Research University Higher School of
Economics, Moscow, Russia | The Centre of Speech Pathology and
Neurorehabilitation, Moscow, Russia | The Russian National Research Medical University,
Moscow, Russia | Moscow Research Institute of Psychiatry, Moscow,
Russia | Laboratory for Communication Science, University of
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Anatoly Anatolyevich Skvortsov,
Ph.D., Neuropsychological laboratory, Fundamental Research Centre, National
Research University "Higher School of Economics", ul. Myasnitskaya, 20, 101000
Moscow, Russia. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract: Acquired disorders of writing in the Russian language have been
reported for more than a century. The study of these disorders reflects the
history of Russian neuropsychology and is dominated by the syndrome approach
most notably by the writings of Luria. Indeed, our understanding of acquired
dysgraphia in Russian speakers is conceptualized according to the classical
approach in Modern Russia. In this review, we describe the classical approach
and compare it to the cognitive neuropsychological models of writing disorders
that are developed to explain dysgraphia in English and in other Western
European languages. We argue that the basic theoretical assumptions of the two
approaches – cognitive and classical or syndrome approach – share
similarities. It is therefore proposed that identification of acquired cases of
dysgraphia in Russian could potentially benefit from taking the cognitive
neuropsychological perspective. We also conclude that adopting elements of the
syndrome approach would substantially enrich the understanding of acquired
dysgraphia since these offer an insight into processes not described in the
cognitive neuropsychological approach.
