Educationally-oriented measures of handwriting fluency--tasks such as written alphabet recall and sentence copying--conflate graphomotor skill and various higher-level abilities. Direct measurement of pen control when forming letters requires analysis of pen-tip velocity associated with the production of sub-letter features that, in a skilled…

A growing number of primary school students experience difficulties with grapho-motor skills involved in handwriting, which impact both form and content of their texts. Therefore, it is important to assess and monitor handwriting skills in primary school via standardized tests and detect specific grapho-motor parameters (GMPs) which impact…

Spelling and handwriting are related skills which are critical for writing but are typically assessed separately. Doing so makes it more difficult to understand their respective development. We describe the creation and evaluation of a tool for their concurrent assessment: the Spelling and Handwriting Legibility Test (SaHLT). We examined whether…

Bansho (Japanese board writing) is becoming an area of interest among researchers and educators as it could serve as an asset to make a searching inquiry into teaching. This study aims to identify the variations of bansho styles in Japanese schools and draws its data from 10 lessons from a primary school in Japan. All lesson observations were…

Math computation is a foundational skill for students developing higher-level mathematics problem-solving skills and represents a primary deficit for students struggling in mathematics. Students with mathematics difficulties also tend to have difficulties with other executive functions. One domain that is systematically part of most mathematical…

Research Findings: Fluent and legible handwriting is associated with longer texts and higher text quality and is therefore an important goal in the primary school curriculum. While girls' handwriting tends to be more proficient than boys', potential differences in the correlates of girls' and boys' early handwriting are poorly understood. In this…

Graphomotor and handwriting disabilities (GD and HD, respectively) could significantly reduce children's quality of life. Effective remediation depends on proper diagnosis; however, current approaches to diagnosis and assessment of GD and HD have several limitations and knowledge gaps, e.g. they are subjective, they do not facilitate…

This study sought to examine the influence of transcription skills, evaluated using graphonomic measures, on the proficiency of text generation in students attending primary schools in Spain. A longitudinal design was employed involving 278 Spanish students distributed across three cohorts (cohort 1: 1st-2nd-4th grade; cohort 2: 2nd-3rd-5th grade;…

The current study examined the effectiveness of a "writing is caught" approach with young developing writers in Norway. This method is based on the premise that writing competence is acquired naturally through real use in meaningful contexts. Our longitudinal randomized control trial study tested this proposition by examining if…

Purpose: Despite abundant evidence that morphemes are important in reading and spelling, little is known about the nature of processing in spelling. This study identifies multiple morphological processes over the time course of spelling, revealing that these processes are influenced by development. Method: Twenty adults and 46 children (8;0-12;1…

LXD Research conducted a study to examine the relationship between investment in Zaner-Bloser Handwriting program and Grade 3 student proficiency in handwriting in Alabama. Data from 4,759 students across 54 schools were analyzed, with schools categorized into Low Zaner-Bloser Handwriting (>$1 and [less than or equal to]$5 per student per…

Digital tools are an integral part of most writing communities across the globe, enhancing the criticality of gaining a comprehensive understanding of both paper and computer-based writing acquisition and development. The relationships between transcription skills and children's paper-based writing performance are well documented. Less is known…

Imitation is a crucial process for learning and brain development. It is based on the mirror neuron mechanism and underlies our understanding of actions and the gestures of others. Some researchers hypothesized a possible correlation between a low functioning mirror neuron system (MNS) and developmental coordination disorder, including dysgraphic…

The development of written expression includes transcription, text generation, and executive functions (including planning) interacting within working memory. However, executive functions are not formally measured in school-based written expression tasks, although there is an opportunity for examining students' advance planning--a key…

To date, there is no clear evidence to support choosing handwriting over keyboarding or vice versa as the modality children should use when they first learn to write. 102 Norwegian first-grade children from classrooms that used both electronic touchscreen keyboard on a digital tablet and pencil-and-paper for writing instruction wrote narratives in…