Reading and writing performances of children 7-8 years of age with developmental coordination disorder in Taiwan.
In Mandarin-speaking children with DCD, writing lags but reading does not—so test each skill separately.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team tested 30 first-graders in Taipei. Half had developmental coordination disorder (DCD). Half were typically developing.
All kids read a short passage and copied a short paragraph. The tasks were in Mandarin Chinese.
The researchers timed the writing and counted reading errors.
What they found
Kids with DCD wrote fewer letters in one minute. Their letters were also messier.
Surprise: both groups made the same number of reading mistakes.
The authors say the picture-based Mandarin script may protect reading even when motor skills are weak.
How this fits with other research
Llanes et al. (2020) saw the opposite pattern in English-speaking kids with autism. Those children showed reading and writing problems. The difference may be the language, not the diagnosis.
Favart et al. (2016) also found writing problems in children with language impairment. Like Hsiang-Chun et al., they saw writing suffer while reading stayed near age level.
Baixauli et al. (2016) pooled 24 studies on narrative writing. Most showed writing deficits across neurodevelopmental disorders. None separated reading scores, so the script-specific effect was missed.
Why it matters
If you assess a Mandarin-speaking child with DCD, expect slow, messy writing but age-appropriate reading. Do not lump both skills together. Use separate goals: pencil-grip training for writing, keep reading at grade level. For English speakers, double-check both areas.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) refers to a delay in motor development that does not have any known medical cause. Studies conducted in English speaking societies have found that children with DCD display a higher co-occurrence rate of learning difficulties (e.g., problems in reading and writing) than typically developing (TD) children. The present study examined the reading and writing performance of school-aged children with DCD and TD children in Taiwan to determine whether reading and writing difficulties also co-occur with DCD in a non-English speaking society. The Chinese Reading Achievement Test and the Basic Reading and Writing Test were administered to 37 children with DCD (7.8 ± 0.6 years) and 93 TD children (8.0 ± 0.7 years). Children with DCD had significantly lower writing composite scores than TD children on the Basic Reading and Writing Test (105.9 ± 20.0 vs. 114.4 ± 19.9). However, there were no significant differences between children with DCD and TD children in their scores on the Chinese Reading Achievement Test and in their reading composite scores on the Basic Reading and Writing Test. These results contrasted interestingly with those obtained from English-speaking children: English-speaking DCD children showed poorer reading and poorer writing than English-speaking TD children. The possibility that the logographic nature of the Chinese script might have protected the DCD children against additional reading difficulty is discussed.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2011 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2011.06.017