The relationship between emergent drawing, emergent writing, and visual‐motor integration in preschool children

Abstract

Drawing and writing are two major representational systems with many common aspects. Each also has its own system of rules, characterized by different degrees of visual realism and conventionality. The relationship between them at their emergence and the contribution of perceptual and motor skills to their development have been under‐investigated, leading to discordant study results. This study investigated the emergence of the ability to draw and write and the association between these two processes in 3‐ to 5‐year‐old preschoolers, controlling for the role played by visual‐motor integration ability. A total of 115 preschoolers were tested for drawing and writing tasks and visual‐motor integration. Variance analysis, correlation analysis, and covariance analysis were performed. The results illustrated a stable association between drawing and writing in the age range considered, which can be traced to their common representational core. Moreover, the weight of visual‐motor coordination is differentiated for the two notational systems.

Ready for handwriting? A reference data study on handwriting readiness assessments

“…This finding supports the theory that besides fine motor performance there are other performance components needed for handwriting readiness. In previous research it is reported that besides fine motor coordination also visual-motor integration, as measured with the Developmental Test for Visual-Motor Integration (Beery-VMI) [15], is an important performance component [13,14,25]. Besides fine motor coordination and visualmotor integration, sustained attention was also descripted a predictive factor of handwriting attainment [9,26,27].…”

Un asunto de familia: promoción del capital comunicativo y las identidades escriturales de los niños(as) pequeños(as)

“…La investigación también revela que los niños(as) pequeños(as) desarrollan sus habilidades de escritura simultáneamente a sus habilidades de dibujo y pueden diferenciar los propósitos y los procesos, así como los puntos comunes y las diferencias entre sistemas (Pinto & Incognito, 2021). Asimismo, los estudios indican que participar en el proceso usando tanto dibujos como escritos puede incitar nuevas ideas y formas de comunicación entre ellos (Bezemer & Kress, 2008;Short et al, 2000).…”

“…Segundo, nuestro análisis muestra las consecuencias involuntarias de realizar presunciones sobre las intenciones o significados que los niños(as) asignan a sus dibujos, marcas o elementos escritos de sus composiciones multimodales, que a menudo se entrelazan de forma intencionada (Bezemer & Kress, 2008;Levin & Bus, 2003;Olshansky, 2008;Pinto & Incognito, 2021;Sidelnick & Svoboda, 2000). Implica que los educadores(as) iniciales y los padres/ madres/cuidadores(as) deben resistir la tentación de interpretar las composiciones de los niños(as) sin consultarlo con los(as) jóvenes autores(as).…”

Supporting the Writing Development of Emergent Bilingual Children: Universal and Language‐Specific Approaches

“…Young children use varied forms of written communication to share their ideas with others and to demonstrate their understanding that print conveys meaning. Research shows that drawing and writing share many representational capacities as young children often use similar social, physical, and cognitive processes when using materials to construct a picture or a piece of writing (Pinto & Incognito, 2021). This may be one reason that so much writing happens in the art area in early childhood classroom as the presence of materials and the context of sharing ideas promotes children to compose and use their handwriting and invented spelling skills (Quinn, Gerde, & Bingham, 2021).…”