Individuals with developmental disabilities make their own stylistic contributions to text written with physical facilitation.

Introduction: For individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) such as autism, Down syndrome, or cerebral palsy, learning to express with language is a two-fold challenge because atypical cognitive capacity is compounded by sensorimotor coordination deficits. One approach to assisting linguistic expression in these individuals is to physically support them, for example, by touching their torso or arm as they type. The neurophysiological mechanism of such motor assistance for linguistic expression is not known, but recently it has been proposed that light touch may reduce the cognitive load associated with the sensorimotor coordination of typing, thereby releasing shared cognitive resources to the task of generating content.

Touch may reduce cognitive load during assisted typing by individuals with developmental disabilities.

Many techniques have attempted to provide physical support to ease the execution of a typing task by individuals with developmental disabilities (DD). These techniques have been controversial due to concerns that the support provider's touch can influence the typed content. The most common interpretation of assisted typing as an ideomotor phenomenon has been qualified recently by studies showing that users with DD make identifiable contributions to the process.