Abstract
Skilled handwriting of single letters is associated not only with a neat final product but also with fluent pen-movement, characterized by a smooth pen-tip velocity profile. Our study explored fluency when writing single letters in children who were just beginning to learn to handwrite, and the extent to which this was predicted by the children’s pen-control ability and by their letter knowledge. 176 Norwegian children formed letters by copying and from dictation (i.e., in response to hearing letter sounds). Performance on these tasks was assessed in terms of the counts of velocity inversions as the children produced sub-letter features that would be produced by competent handwriters as a single, smooth (ballistic) action. We found that there was considerable variation in these measures across writers, even when producing well-formed letters. Children also copied unfamiliar symbols, completed various pen-control tasks (drawing lines, circles, garlands, and figure eights), and tasks that assessed knowledge of letter sounds and shapes. After controlling for pen-control ability, pen-movement fluency was affected by letter knowledge (specifically children’s performance on a task that required selecting graphemes on the basis of their sound). This was the case when children retrieved letter forms from dictated letter sounds, but also when directly copying letters and, unexpectedly, when copying unfamiliar symbols. These findings suggest that familiarity with a letter affects movement fluency during letter production but may also point towards a more general ability to process new letter-like symbols in children with good letter knowledge.
Highlights
It is still the case that in most educational contexts children first learn to write by forming letters with pen or pencil on paper
Evidence suggests that handwriting ability is important for successful writing, relatively little is known about the factors that contribute to letter-formation fluency
The main question addressed in the research that we report in this paper is whether, after control for graphomotor skill, children’s general letter knowledge predicts within-letter penmovement fluency
Summary
It is still the case that in most educational contexts children first learn to write by forming letters with pen or pencil on paper. Studies exploring correlation with text quality, such as those reviewed by Feng et al (2019) measure handwriting ability using tasks that require reading and copying sentences (Barnett et al, 2009; Olinghouse and Graham, 2009) and/or written alphabet recall (Berninger and Rutberg, 1992; Kent et al, 2014). Successful performance of these tasks requires a broad combination of reading, orthographic, motor, and memory skills. The aim of the research that we report in this paper was to explore child level factors that predict fluent pen movement when forming letters
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