Handwriting features of children with developmental coordination disorder--results of triangular evaluation.
Triple handwriting data—speed, teacher score, and legibility—clearly flag DCD and can guide referral.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team looked at handwriting in children with developmental coordination disorder. They used three checks at once: a computer tablet, a teacher scale, and a legibility score.
Kids with DCD and typical kids copied the same sentence. Every pen stroke was timed and measured. Teachers also rated each paper without knowing who wrote it.
What they found
Children with DCD wrote slower and their letters were harder to read. The three checks agreed: the group with DCD scored lower on every measure.
No single child with DCD out-performed the average typical writer.
How this fits with other research
Bartov et al. (2024) added grip-force data to the same set-up. They found weaker, wobblier pen grip in DCD, tying the poor letters to a clear physical cause.
van den Bos et al. (2024) looked at autism, not DCD. Longer air pauses helped ASD kids write better, but in the DCD study longer pauses only marked delay, not help. The two papers seem to clash until you see the diagnoses differ.
Gosse et al. (2020) saw dyslexic kids slow only when letters were fancy. DCD kids slowed on every letter, so the deficit is broader than a complexity effect.
Why it matters
If a student’s writing is both slow and messy, run the quick three-part check: digitizer numbers, teacher rubric, and legibility score. When all three point down, suspect DCD and refer for motor services. The same tool can later show whether therapy is working.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Developmental coordination disorders (DCD) is one of the most common disorders affecting school-aged children. The study aimed to characterize the handwriting performance of children with DCD who write in Arabic, based on triangular evaluation. Participants included 58 children aged 11-12 years, 29 diagnosed with DCD based on the DSM-IV criteria and the M-ABC, and 29 matched typically developed controls. Children were asked to copy a paragraph on a sheet of paper affixed to a digitizer supplying objective measures of the handwriting process. The handwriting proficiency screening questionnaire (HPSQ) was completed by their teachers while observing their performance and followed by evaluation of their final written product. Results indicated that compared to controls, children with DCD required significantly more on-paper and in-air time per stroke while copying. In addition, global legibility, unrecognizable letters and spatial arrangement measures of their written product were significantly inferior. Significant group differences were also found between the HPSQ subscales scores. Furthermore, 82.8% of all participants were correctly classified into groups based on one discriminate function which included two handwriting performance measures. These study results strongly propose application of triangular standardized evaluation to receive better insight of handwriting deficit features of individual children with DCD who write in Arabic.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2013 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2013.08.009