The paper describes a study in which the relationship between the cognitive and psychomotor aspects of children's spelling and writing performances was investigated. By comparing data from various categories of children the relationship between the semantic and psychomotor functions could be examined, and differences between the skill performances of the three groups of students were predicted. A four-way 3 X 3 X 2 X 2 orthogonal design with categories of subjects, type, structure, and length of task as independent variables was used in the laboratory study, with 24 "normal", 24 dyslexic, and 24 dysgraphic nine-year-old children as subjects. Most of the 16 hypotheses were verified by data identifying some of the spelling and writing characteristics of the three groups of children and the effects of contextual parameters on their performances. Dyslexic children, for example, seemed to write more slowly than the others, and their mean score of spelling errors was the highest one, whereas the dysgraphic children had the lowest mean score in writing accuracy and rhythm.
During the last 10 to 15 yr. the stressing of individualized instructions has caused a reorganization of some schools, curricula, and instructional methods. Different theoretical approaches have been used for developing individualized instruction programmes in reading, spelling, and writing. The present experimental study of individualized instruction in copying, tracing, tracking, and handwriting was based on theoretical feedback principles. Close relationships between visuo-motor ability, copying, tracing, tracking, and writing performances were hypothesized and so were the main effects of the experimental programme with concern to the educational, psychomotor skills in question. In general, the predictions were confirmed by data in the present study in which 36 third-graders participated. Some additional information was presented, e.g., significant interaction between the experimental programme and subjects' writing skills was found for tracing only.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.