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disorder of written expression

in DSM–IV–TR, a learning disorder in which writing skills are substantially below those expected for a person’s chronological age, education, and measured intelligence. The writing difficulties—which may involve errors in grammar, punctuation, and paragraph organization, often combined with extremely poor handwriting and spelling errors—significantly interfere with academic achievement and activities of daily living that require writing skills. In DSM–5, the disorder has been subsumed within a category labeled specific learning disorder and is no longer considered a distinct diagnosis. Also called developmental dysgraphia.

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Psychology term of the day

December 27th 2024

self-organizing system

self-organizing system

any system whose elements spontaneously interact in such a way as to create a higher level structure as a result of their intrinsic properties. Many biological molecules show spontaneous self-organization, but purely physical systems do so as well, as in phase changes in water at different temperatures.