Copying words from the board or desk? Performance of children with and without dyslexia.
(2022) The SIG Writing Conference 2022 — Location: Umeå, Sweden (20.June.2022)
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- Abstract
- Purpose. Every day at school, children are asked to copy words from different supports more or less distant, such as copying from the board or a paper on the desk. At the same time, while copying skills are used daily at school, there is little evidence about whether children with dyslexia have a specific deficit in copying, in addition to their spelling deficit. Moreover, some children with dyslexia are known to present handwriting and visuomotor difficulties. Therefore, the present research aims to fully understand the copying skills of children with and without dyslexia by comparing two different copying conditions: a far point (from the board) copying task and a near point (from a paper on the desk) copying task. Method. Twenty-five French-speaking children with dyslexia (Mage=8;9 years) were compared to 25 chronological age-matched children (CA children, Mage=8;8 years) and 25 spelling age-matched children (SA children, Mage=7;6 years). Participants were asked to perform control tasks (vocabulary, short term verbal memory, non-verbal IQ, etc.) and two 16-word copying tasks: a board and a desk copying task. Words varied in terms of regularity: 8 regular words and 8 irregular words were administered in each task. For each word, spelling accuracy, handwriting quality, handwriting duration, number of pauses, and number of gaze lifts were considered. Results. GLMM were used in order to consider both the variability induced by children and that induced by the items. Analyses showed that all children were slower in the board copying task than in the desk copying task. In addition, analyses showed that children with dyslexia were slower and produced more gaze lifts than CA children in both copying tasks. Conclusion. These findings suggest that children with dyslexia do have impaired copying skills, regardless of the copying condition. Overall, it provides new insights and encourages future research to deeply study copying processes to help children with copying difficulties at school.
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Blampain, E., & Van Reybroeck, M. (2022). Copying words from the board or desk? Performance of children with and without dyslexia. The SIG Writing Conference 2022, Umeå, Sweden. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/104846