Relation of Spelling and Writing in Learning Disabilities

Abstract

The paper describes a study in which the relationship between the cognitive and psychomotor aspects of children's spelling and writing performances was investigated. By comparing data from various categories of children the relationship between the semantic and psychomotor functions could be examined, and differences between the skill performances of the three groups of students were predicted. A four-way 3 X 3 X 2 X 2 orthogonal design with categories of subjects, type, structure, and length of task as independent variables was used in the laboratory study, with 24 "normal", 24 dyslexic, and 24 dysgraphic nine-year-old children as subjects. Most of the 16 hypotheses were verified by data identifying some of the spelling and writing characteristics of the three groups of children and the effects of contextual parameters on their performances. Dyslexic children, for example, seemed to write more slowly than the others, and their mean score of spelling errors was the highest one, whereas the dysgraphic children had the lowest mean score in writing accuracy and rhythm.

A review of handwriting research: Progress and prospects from 1980 to 1994

“…Consistent differences in the amount of time these two groups spend when pausing as they write, though, have not been obtained. Although Sovik et al (1987a) reported that children with dysgraphia spent more time pausing when writing words, this finding was not replicated in studies by Sovik et al (1987b) with dysgraphics or by Wann and Jones (1986) with poor handwriters. Paradoxically, Wann and Jones (1986) found that when writing letters, poor writers in Australia paused more often and for longer periods of time than good writers.…”

“…Congruent with the findings of Hamstra-Bletz and Blote (1993), online computer analyses by Sovik and his colleagues (Sovik et al, 1987a(Sovik et al, , b, 1989 showed that the writing of third grade children in Norway with dysgraphia was less smooth than the writing of their "normal" peers. Consistent differences in the amount of time these two groups spend when pausing as they write, though, have not been obtained.…”

“…Not surprisingly, the handwriting of students identified as dysgraphics or poor writers is not as legible as the writing of good handwriters. Differences in accuracy and qual-ity have been found on letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs (Hamstra-Bletz and Blote, 1993;Maeland and Karlsdottir, 1991;Rubin and Henderson, 1982;Sovik et al, 1987a;Sovik, Arntzen, and Thygesen, 1987b;Sovik, Maeland, and Karlsdottir, 1989;Tarnopol and Feldman, 1987;Wann and Kardirkamanathan, 1991).…”

“…The term dysgraphia is frequently used in the literature to refer to children who have a specific learning disability in handwriting (Sovik, Arntzen, and Thygesen, 1987a). The term itself does not explain the cause of handwriting difficulties, but refers to a serious handwriting problem that cannot be predicted on the basis of performance in other academic areas.…”

Dynamic time warping: A new method in the study of poor handwriting

“…Digitizer-based technology has opened new avenues for the assessment of handwriting by providing reproducible and objective measures that distinguish between the writing of children with and without writing difficulties [17,21,22,24,25,26]. The resulting analytical approach uses the kinematics of the children's movements to provide information on the real-time strategies and the dynamic characteristics of the deviant motor performance, including pen pressure, pen velocity, and trajectory length.…”