Impact of handwriting training on fluency, spelling and text quality among third graders

Effectiveness of Psychomotor Therapy among Children with Graphomotor Impairment with and without DCD-Diagnosis

In Switzerland, psychomotor therapy (PMT) is a standard treatment for children with graphomotor impairments, but scientific evidence of its effectiveness is rare. To investigate the effectiveness of PMT, we conducted a randomised field trial (RFT). The sample consisted of 121 first and second graders with graphomotor impairments, some of whom met the criteria of developmental coordination disorder, while the remaining suffered from developmental dysgraphia. The treatments lasted over 5 months. Handwriting fluency and consistency were measured five times on a digitising tablet. All participating children completed a self-concept interview, and a standardised fine motor performance test twice. Psychomotor therapy significantly improved the fine motor skills of the therapy group compared to those of the waiting group. However, there was no evidence that the treated children improved more than the waiting children in terms of their graphomotor skills such as frequency, automaticity, and consistency of forming letters. Finally, the children of the therapy group showed partial improvements in their handwriting self-concept, while those of the waiting group children remained stable. This short-term RFT demonstrated the effectiveness of PMT in terms of fine motor skills and some aspects of the handwriting self-concept but showed no effects on handwriting fluency and consistency.

Anticipatory Awareness and Actual Handwriting Performance Measures among Adolescents with Deficient Executive Functions

This secondary analysis explores differences and correlations between handwriting anticipatory awareness (time estimation, expected performance, and expected difficulty) before a paragraph copying task and actual performance time and legibility among adolescents with executive function deficits (EFD) versus neurotypical adolescents. Eighty-one adolescents (10–18 years old; 41 with EFD and daily functioning difficulties as per parent reports) estimated their time, expected performance, and expected difficulty before the paragraph copying task using the Self-Awareness of Performance Questionnaire (SAP-Q). Time duration was assessed using the Computerized Penmanship Evaluation Tool (ComPET) software, and legibility was scored using the Handwriting Legibility Scale (HLS). Significant between-group differences were found in actual time duration (ComPET), HLS total score and legibility components, and three SAP-Q questions. Both groups estimated significantly more performance time than their actual performance duration. The adolescents with EFD underestimated their performance before the handwriting task. Significant correlations were found between actual performance, anticipatory awareness, and Executive Function (EF) in both groups. Their performance predictions were significantly correlated with their EF and product’s legibility. The results highlight the potential relationships between anticipatory awareness and actual handwriting performance (time duration and legibility) of adolescents with and without EFD. Further studies may analyze the benefits of focusing on both EF and anticipatory awareness for handwriting improvement among populations with EF deficits.

Promoting Handwriting Fluency for Preschool and Elementary-Age Students: Meta-Analysis and Meta-Synthesis of Research From 2000 to 2020

Handwriting is a complex activity that involves continuous interaction between lower-level handwriting and motor skills and higher-order cognitive processes. It is important to allocate mental resources to these high-order processes since these processes place a great demand on cognitive capacity. This is possible when lower-level skills such as transcription are effortlessness and fluent. Given that fluency is a value in virtually all areas of academic learning, schools should provide instructional activities to promote writing fluency from the first stages of learning to write. In an effort to determine if teaching handwriting enhances writing fluency, we conducted a systematic and meta-analytic review of the writing fluency intervention literature. We selected 31 studies: 21 true and quasi-experimental studies, 4 single-group design, 3 single-subject design, and 3 non-experimental studies, conducted with K-6 students in a regular school setting. A total of 2,030 students participated in these studies. When compared to no instruction or non-handwriting instructional conditions, teaching different handwriting intervention programs resulted in statistically significant greater writing fluency (ES = 0.64). Moreover, three specific handwriting interventions yielded statistically significant results in improving writing fluency, when compared to other handwriting interventions or to typical handwriting instruction conditions: handwriting focused on training timed transcription skills (ES = 0.49), multicomponent handwriting treatments (ES = 0.40), and performance feedback (ES = 0.36). There were not enough data to calculate the impact of sensory-motor and self-regulated strategy handwriting interventions on writing fluency. The significance of these findings for implementing and differentiating handwriting fluency instruction and guiding future research will be discussed.

The Effects of Planning and Handwriting Style on Quantity Measures in Secondary School Children’s Writing

The study aimed to evaluate the proposer, translator, editor, and transcriber process model of writing in the context of secondary school children. Eighty-three children completed written texts under conditions that facilitated the proposer and placed resource demands on the transcriber. It was found that the number of words, lexical richness, and the number of sentences were affected by transcription resource demands, while the number of sentences was increased when the proposer was facilitated. There were also by-gender interactions that indicated male writers and female writers completed the tasks to different product levels. The discussion proposes that future developments of the model take into account a more direct interaction between the transcriber and translation level processes when considering this age group.

Reduced graphomotor procedural learning in children and adolescents with ADHD

PURPOSE

The present study sought to determine if children and adolescents with ADHD demonstrate reduced procedural learning of a graphomotor program.

METHOD

Thirty-two children and adolescents between age 9 and 15 with (n = 16) and without ADHD (n = 16) participated in the study. Each group of participants practiced a novel grapheme on a digitizing tablet 30 times. Participants with ADHD were off stimulant medication or were medication naïve.

RESULTS

Control participants demonstrated significant improvement in graphomotor fluency from the beginning to the end of practice, T = 2, z = -2.534, p = .009, whereas participants with ADHD did not, T = 4, z = -1.810, p = .074.

CONCLUSIONS

Consistent with findings in adults with ADHD, results indicate that graphomotor procedural learning in children and adolescents with ADHD is attenuated. Findings have implications for future research that may inform remediation of handwriting difficulties, academic accommodations, and using digitizing technology for neuropsychological assessment.