Abstract
Spatial disabilities are usually considered either from a cognitivist point of view or as a sign of ‘minimal brain damage’. We have studied disabilities associated with spatial orientation in 60 children, aged 8 to 10, referred to us for learning disabilities. Performances on the Bender Gestalt test and on the Bergès–Lézine test for the imitation of gestures have been related to the presence or absence of neurological soft signs, psychomotor disturbances, a pathological or mixed laterality, and a pathological anamnesis: the relationships among all these factors appear to be quite complex.
Difficulties in orienting arms in reference to the body may be related to neurological signs corresponding to a hypothetical brain damage. More complex imitations, involving subtle spatial relationships and reversibility, are impaired when psychomotor disturbances are present. Impairment of orientation in graphic space may result from an affective–emotional disorganisation, reflected by psychomotor troubles. All these results show how difficulties in imitating somebody else's movements and in reproducing a graphic model can be related to different kinds of neurological disorganisation, functional as well as organic.
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