Comparative analysis of cursive letters handwriting of a first-grade child presenting a developmental coordination disorder with those of ordinary pre-school and first-grade children

We provide here a detailed comparison of the cursive letters drawn by a first-grade child presenting a developmental coordination disorder (DCD), with those of first-grade children and pre-school children. On the basis of two distinct tasks (copy and dictation of six cursive letters), we estimated the quality of each letter by a quote and measured different parameters to evaluate writing fluidity. We show that for both tasks, the letters of the DCD child are significantly different from those of children of her age, in particular for the dictation task, which requires a mental representation of the letter. The more discriminative parameters between the tracks of the DCD child and those of children of her age are length and speed. (C) 2010 Societe francaise de psychologie. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.