Abstract
The aim of this study was to assess text generation and text transcription of children and youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD, n = 67) and Typically Developing (TD) peers (n = 67). Participants (80.6% male, ages 9–14) produced a free-style handwriting task analysed for written content and handwriting legibility and speed. Findings showed children and youth with ASD perform significantly poorer than TD peers for written content and handwriting legibility and speed. For children and youth with ASD, poor handwriting legibility predicted poor written content. For TD peers, fast handwriting predicted good written content. Collapsing both groups, ASD group membership negatively predicted written content, after controlling for handwriting legibility and speed. Practical implementations for the educational context are provided.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Autism Fund (Grant No. 190236) in the Netherlands for their contribution to the Handwriting Study which helped to cover the costs of materials for the data collection in the Netherlands. The authors thank the undergraduate and graduate students of the Center of Human Movement Sciences and the Inclusive and Special Needs Education Unit of the University of Groningen for their outstanding assistance during data collection. The authors also thank the two reviewers whose feedback substantially increased the quality of this paper.
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NB and SR jointly designed the study. NB collected and analysed the data. All authors contributed to the preparation of the manuscript and all read and approved the final manuscript.
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van den Bos, N., Houwen, S., Schoemaker, M. et al. Balancing Text Generative and Text Transcriptive Demands: Written Content and Handwriting Legibility and Speed of Children and Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder. J Autism Dev Disord 52, 4540–4553 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05325-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05325-w