AUTOMATED SYNTAX ANALYSES OF DRAWING TWO TANGENT PATTERNS IN CHILDREN WITH LOW AND AVERAGE HANDWRITING ABILITY (.).

Sequential strategies of digitized tablet drawings by 6-7-yr.-old children (N = 203) of average and below-average handwriting ability were analyzed. A Beery Visual Motor Integration (BVMI) and a Bender-Gestalt (BG) pattern, each composed of two tangential shapes, were predefined into area sectors for automatic analysis and adaptive mapping of the drawings.

The use of graphic rules in grade one to help identify children at risk of handwriting difficulties.

Previous researches on elementary grade handwriting revealed that pupils employ certain strategy when writing or drawing. The relationship between this strategy and the use of graphic rules has been documented but very little research has been devoted to the connection between the use of graphic rules and handwriting proficiency. Thus, this study was conducted to investigate the relative contribution of the use of graphic rules to the writing ability.

Extraction of dynamic features from hand drawn data for the identification of children with handwriting difficulty.

Studies have shown that differences between children with and without handwriting difficulties lie not only in the written product (static data) but also in dynamic data of handwriting process. Since writing system varies among countries and individuals, this study was conducted to determine the feasibility of using quantitative outcome measures of children's drawing to identify children who are at risk of handwriting difficulties. A sample of 143 first graders of a normal primary school was investigated regarding their handwriting ability.