Handwriting evaluation for developmental dysgraphia: Process versus product

The act of writing presents difficulties for10–30% of elementary school children. Thisstudy's objectives were to compare theabilities of digitizer-based evaluation of thehandwriting process and conventional evaluationof the handwriting product to discriminatebetween children with proficient and dysgraphichandwriting. Copied and dictated writingsamples were collected from 3rd grade students,50 with proficient and 50 with dysgraphichandwriting. Results indicated that bothdigitizer-based and conventional evaluationsdifferentiated between children with proficientand dysgraphic handwriting, and that togetherthey provided an improved understanding ofwriting difficulties. Moreover, copying anddictated writing task results differed significantly.The results demonstrate theadvantages of combining both handwritingprocess and product testing, and utilizing bothcopying and dictation tasks, in order toachieve a more comprehensive understanding andsuperior evaluation of developmentaldysgraphia.

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