Exploring relationships between working memory and writing: Individual differences associated with gender

From Scribbles to Script: Graphomotor Skills' Impact on Spelling in Early Primary School

The acquisition of handwriting skills is a crucial goal in early primary school. Yet our comprehension of handwriting development, encompassing graphomotor skills and spelling, remains fragmented. The identification of predictors for handwriting skills is essential for providing early support. This longitudinal study aimed to explore the predictive roles of gender, working memory, and motivation to handwrite for graphomotor skills six months later and spelling skills one year later. Paper-and-pencil tasks (graphomotor skills, spelling), a tablet task (working memory), and a questionnaire (teachers' ratings of children's handwriting motivation) were employed. This study included 363 first-grade children (49.8% girls) aged 6-9 years. Results from a structural equation model, controlling for age and socioeconomic background, revealed that girls exhibited superior performance in graphomotor skills, while boys tended to spell more accurately. Furthermore, working memory predicted graphomotor skills but not spelling. Additionally, motivation to handwrite predicted both first-grade graphomotor skills and second-grade spelling. This study extends contemporary evidence, demonstrating that graphomotor skills predict spelling while considering gender and motivation. The findings underscore the pivotal role of graphomotor skills in spelling acquisition and suggest their contribution to spelling difficulties.

Effects of ADHD on Writing Composition Product and Process in School-Age Students

Objective: This study examined the relationship between ADHD and writing performance. Method: Students in Grades 3 to 7, 84 with ADHD and 135 age- and gender-matched controls completed a writing task (including process logs), and measures of working memory and attention. Results: Students with ADHD wrote texts of similar length but with poorer structure, coherence, and ideation. In all, 6.7% of the variance in writing quality was explained by whether or not the student had an ADHD diagnosis, after control for IQ and age-within-year, with ADHD students producing text that was less coherent, well structured, and ideationally rich, and spending less time thinking about and reviewing their text. Half of the effect on text quality could be attributed to working memory and sustained attention effects. Conclusion: ADHD has some effect on writing performance, which can, in part, be explained by working memory and attentional deficits.

Investigating Haptic Guidance Methods for Teaching Children Handwriting Skills

Haptics technologies have the potential to considerably improve the acquisition of handwriting skills by providing physical assistance to improve movement accuracy and precision. To date, very few studies have thoroughly examined the effectiveness of various haptic guidance methods to leverage the acquisition of handwriting skills. In this paper, we examine the role of several methods for haptic guidance, namely full haptic guidance, partial haptic guidance, disturbance haptic guidance, and no-haptic guidance toward improving the learning outcomes of handwriting skills acquisition for typical children. A group of 42 children from Cranleigh School Abu Dhabi across two educational stages, namely Foundation Stage 2 (FS2, 4-5 years old) and Year 2 (6-7 years old), participated in this study. Results showed that disturbance haptic guidance was the most effective for high complexity handwriting tasks (such as writing the letters "o" and "g"), partial haptic guidance was the most effective for medium complexity handwriting tasks (such as "t," "r," "s," "e," "n," "a," and "b"), and full haptic guidance was the most effective for low complexity letters (such as "i"). Another interesting finding was that FS2 participants had statistically significant improvement in handwriting speed compared to the Year 2 group, demonstrated by a significantly shorter test completion time. Furthermore, female children performed statistically better than their male counterparts in partial guidance. These results can be utilized to build more effective haptic-based handwriting tools for typical children.