Handwriting and spelling: dyslexic children's abilities compared with children of the same chronological age and younger children of the same spelling level.

Handwriting speed and spelling were examined in a group of 10-year-old dyslexic children compared with children of the same age and with younger children of the same spelling level. The children wrote lists of words onto a digitizer pad in three different condition: a dictation, copying from a sheet on the desk and copying from a wall chart. The words ranged in complexity from simple monosyllabic phoneme to grapheme words to words needing orthographic and morphological information and non-words. There were differences in writing speed between the 10-year-olds and 8-year-olds in most conditions. There were no significant differences in speed of writing or pausing between the dyslexic children and the 10-year-olds. There was a difference in the number of errors in the spelling of non-words, the dyslexic children being inferior to both the other groups. The only difference between the dyslexic children and the 8-year-olds was in speed of writing in copying from the desk and in writing complex words. The performance of the dyslexic group was more similar to that of the 8-year-olds in the dictation but to the 10-year-olds in the copying conditions. Independent judges had no difficulty in identifying the 10-year-olds' writing but confused that of the 8-year-olds with the dyslexic children's. It is proposed that the dyslexic children had automatised movement patterns linked to spelling equivalent to their same age peers but that these patterns were built on accumulated inaccuracies in both letter formation and spelling.