Abstract
To investigate the effect of the task on children's overt motor behavior in manipulating a pencil, a study was conducted in which the on-task behavior of 84 three-year-old children was observed. In addition to a free drawing task the children had to draw circles and vertical strokes under a high support condition, eliciting their ‘optimal performance’. It was found that the circle evoked relatively mature, i.e. distal behavior, and the free drawing task relatively immature, i.e. proximal behavior, with the strokes falling in between. Girls were more advanced than boys on all tasks. It was argued that in observing writing behavior as part of an assessment of children's neuro-motor status a task should be used that elicits optimal performance. Furthermore,the findings have some consequences for the study of stages in writing development.
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