Persistent handwriting problems are hard to predict: A longitudinal study of the development of handwriting in primary school.
Early handwriting scores are poor crystal balls—wait until grade three before deciding who needs help.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ferguson et al. (2020) followed a group of typical kids through grades 1 to 4. They tested handwriting speed and neatness every year. The goal was to see if early scores could flag who would still struggle later.
They used simple paper-and-pen tasks. Trained raters scored quality and timed how fast kids copied a sentence.
What they found
Year-one scores were almost useless at predicting year-four problems. Only the neatness score from the year right before had any hint of next-year neatness.
Speed in first grade told nothing about later trouble. Many kids who wrote slowly in grade one caught up by grade three.
How this fits with other research
Gomot et al. (2011) and Shen et al. (2012) show that kids with newly diagnosed ADHD already write with high swing in speed and legibility. Their work says you can spot risk early in ADHD, while F et al. say you cannot in typical kids.
Bartov et al. (2024) found that weak pen-grip force sets kids with DCD apart. F et al. did not measure grip, so we do not know if force would predict better in typical writers.
O'Dwyer et al. (2018) showed that adding a verbal memory task hurts ADHD handwriting. F et al. kept tasks simple, so their weak early links may grow if extra load is added.
Why it matters
If a first-grade teacher says a child writes too slow, do not rush to refer for therapy. Wait and re-check in grade three. By then the picture is clearer and you avoid wasting time and money on kids who would catch up anyway. When you do assess, add a quick verbal load or grip-force check if you suspect ADHD or DCD. These small add-ons can sharpen your decision to refer or wait.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: After one year of tuition, up to a third of primary school children show insufficient handwriting. It is unclear whether this early insufficient handwriting predicts persistent handwriting problems, because there is a dearth of studies that followed developmental trajectories longitudinally. AIMS: To describe handwriting development in primary school children longitudinally and to determine predictive positive value and sensitivity of early handwriting assessment. To analyse whether underlying abilities helps early identification of persistent handwriting problems. METHODS: 173 primary school children were yearly assessed for four years using the Concise Assessment Scale for Children's Handwriting and the Beery Buktenica developmental test of visual-motor integration. RESULTS: Both quality and speed of handwriting increased with years of tuition, with a pronounced increase in quality between two and three years of writing tuition. Sensitivity and positive predictive value were low. The only significant predictor of handwriting quality was handwriting quality in the previous year. For handwriting speed, no significant developmental model was revealed. CONCLUSIONS: Quality and speed of handwriting after one year of tuition is not sufficiently predictive for distinguishing between transient insufficient handwriting and persistent handwriting problems three years later. Practitioners should hold back when referring children for remedial teaching.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2020 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2019.103551