Specifying the graphic characteristics of words that influence children’s handwriting

How Do Spelling, Handwriting Speed, and Handwriting Quality Develop During Primary School? Cross-Classified Growth Curve Analysis of Children's Writing Development

“…Recent findings have demonstrated that words vary in levels of graphic complexity, depending on the fine graphomotor skills, and motor control abilities implied by the pen stroke trajectory. Specifically, tracing pieces that contain abrupt changes in the pen stroke trajectory (e.g., the angle in r) is more difficult than tracing curvy segments (e.g., c; Gosse et al, 2018). To the best of our knowledge, no study has ever investigated the development of handwriting by taking into account the different levels of graphic complexity required by handwriting.…”

“…Recently, a study conducted in children with and without dyslexia reported evidence of the negative impact of word graphic complexity on spelling accuracy in a sample of typically developing children (Gosse and Van Reybroeck, 2020). More precisely, the authors revealed that words that contained graphically complex segments (i.e., abrupt changes of pen stroke trajectory induced by the presence of letters containing angles like the letters r and b), based on the index of graphic complexity developed in Gosse et al (2018), were produced with more spelling errors than graphically simple words (i.e., words that are mostly composed of curvy segments like the letters e and c). Taken together, these findings have demonstrated that the orthographic and graphic sides of writing influence each other.…”

“…With regard to graphic complexity, past research has demonstrated that the graphomotor cost of handwriting could impact spelling accuracy (Van Reybroeck and Hupet, 2009), handwriting speed, and handwriting quality (Gosse et al, 2018). Because children in the younger cohort (coh1) had less automatised handwriting than coh2 children at the start of the study, we assumed that the impact of graphic complexity would be greater in coh1 than in coh2.…”

“…For example, words that include abrupt changes in the pen stroke trajectory are more complex than words containing curvy segments. This information came from a previous experiment conducted by Gosse et al (2018), which determined how these graphic characteristics impacted children's handwriting speed and quality. Each graphic characteristic was quantified in terms of level of complexity, which led to an index giving the value of graphic complexity for each word.…”

“…Even though the current literature contains studies focused on either children's spelling or handwriting, collecting data that consider both transcription skills together is necessary to understand their relationship. Moreover, although it is a major aspect of handwriting, legibility has only rarely been investigated in typically developing children (Gosse et al, 2018;Caravolas et al, 2020). Indeed, the great majority of studies on handwriting reported results based on the dynamic parameters of handwriting (i.e., speed, pausing).…”