Nils Søvik

Relation of Spelling and Writing in Learning Disabilities

The paper describes a study in which the relationship between the cognitive and psychomotor aspects of childrens spelling and writing performances was investigated. By comparing data from various categories of children the relationship between the semantic and psychomotor functions could be examined, and differences between the skill performances of the three groups of students were predicted. A four-way 3 × 3 × 2 × 2 orthogonal design with categories of subjects, type, structure, and length of task as independent variables was used in the laboratory study, with 24 “normal”, 24 dyslexic, and 24 dysgraphic nine-year-old children as subjects. Most of the 16 hypotheses were verified by data identifying some of the spelling and writing characteristics of the three groups of children and the effects of contextual parameters on their performances. Dyslexic children, for example, seemed to write more slowly than the others, and their mean score of spelling errors was the highest one, whereas the dysgraphic children had the lowest mean score in writing accuracy and rhythm.

The Effects of Different Principles of Instruction in Children's Copying Performances.

A lab study was conducted to test the effect of different kinds of instruction in copying tasks, which are considered to be a fundamental function in the area of psycho-motor skills. The study was organized as a two-way design with 24 eight-year-old Ss. The results showed that teacher instruction (both a demonstration of the required motion pattern and a verbal explanation of the same) tended to give the learner highest accuracy scores in copying performances involving two-dimensional figures. However, the copying performances of students rated as having good handwriting at school did not exceed the copying quality of those rated as poor handwriters. No interaction effects were found between the two independent variables, teacher instruction and handwriting skill, under investigation.

Real-time feedback of handwriting in a teaching program☆

Abstract It was investigated whether a training program employing computer-generated feedback on the smoothness of handwriting movements could improve the writing skills of 11-year-old children. Smoothness was defined in terms of the variance of the absolute velocity of the pen. It was found that the training program improved writing speed without diminishing writing accuracy or writing size. Smoothness itself did not improve significantly.

Effects of Feedback Training on ‘NORMAL’ and Dysgraphic Students

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the effects of a training program on the handwriting of both normal and dysgraphic children. Feedback is important in any training, including handwriting training. The effects of feedback, however, depend on the nature of the task and the kind of feedback being used. The program presented in the chapter involves social tracking—with a child doing a tracking task in cooperation with an instructor. Both sensory feedback and supplementary feedback (arising from the interactions between the instructors input and the childs sensory feedback during the task) were presented to children. When compared with control subjects, both the accuracy and smoothness of the writing of these children were significantly improved without any sacrifice of writing speed. There was also some indication that the dysgraphic children might benefit from the program more than the normal children. It was suggested that social tracking is preferable to a computer-assisted instruction.

DEVELOPMENTAL TRENDS OF VISUAL FEEDBACK CONTROL IN COPYING AND HANDWRITING PERFORMANCES OF CHILDREN AGED 7 THROUGH 11 YEARS

According to a neurogeometric motion theory, S would experience changes in normal feedback information as perturbations in executing copying and handwriting activities. Sensory feedback mechanisms in such psycho-motor skill performances seem to depend on perceptual-motor abilities and thus play an important role in such behavior. Hence, a parallel developmental trend regarding feedback control in copying/handwriting behavior was expected. A study organized as a two-way design with 48 students aged 7 to 11 yr. was carried out. The results showed that different forms of displaced feedback had different negative effects on accuracy and speed in copying/handwriting performances, whereas an improved feedback control in the same functions could be observed from CA 7 to 11. No interaction effects were found between the two independent factors under research.

Eye-movement parameters and reading speed

This study addressed the relationship between four eyemovement parameters and reading speed of 20twelve-year-old children during silent and oralreading. The results indicated that each of theparameters correlated significantly with speed ofsilent reading. In fact, reading speed could bepredicted by the following variables: recognitionspan, average fixation duration, and number ofregressive saccades. Moreover, the relationshipbetween silent and oral reading speed, on one hand,and between reading fluency and reading errors in oralreading speed, on the other, was examined. The resultsindicated that in terms of reading speed, significantinterrelationships existed between silent and oralreading. Furthermore, fluency and errors wereintercorrelated phenomena, but only fluency wassubstantially related to oral reading speed.

A comparative study of the writing/spelling performances of ‘normal’, dyslexic, and dysgraphic children

ABSTRACT The present study was based both on a general movement/feedback theory and a ‘two‐routes’ theoretical model developed by cognitive neuropsychologists. Several predictions were made and tested on 24 ‘normal’, 24 dyslexic, and 24 dysgraphic children with concern to their writing (accuracy and speed), tracking, and spelling performances. Most of the hypotheses were verified in the experimentally arranged laboratory study indicating that the semantic aspects (familiarity) of the test‐items (words) as well as the motor aspects (complexity of required movement pattern and length) play an important role in the writing/spelling performances of the nine‐year‐old subjects defined as dyslexic or dysgraphic children.

Developmental Trends of Visual Feedback Control and Learning in Children's Copying and Tracking Skills.

Copying and tracing are used by kindergarten and elementary school children in their introductory courses of writing, drawing, and graphic art. They also do copying and tracing while taking some psychological or educational tests. It has been theorized that sensory feedback control is important for learning and performance of psychomotor skills, and further, that a child’s feedback system and psychomotor skills may be improved by instruction and training. Four hypotheses were developed for this experiment to study the learning effects of repeated treatments in copying and different tracing/tracking behavior of 32 children, ages 7 and 10 years. The results showed a learning effect in copying for the younger subjects, in some tracing behavior for the older subjects, and in tracking for all subjects. Significant differences in favor of older children were disclosed for every test of graphic behavior under investigation.

Cognitive and linguistic predictors of text comprehension

The problem was concerned with the extent to which cognitive/linguistic functions and domain-specific strategies could predict readers’ text comprehension when working with science texts. Six hypotheses were stated and tested in two prediction studies (N=101 eighth-graders), and one experiment (N=8 pupils of same age). Handal’s reading test was used for classifying pupils into good and poor readers. Two texts, one with a known subject and another with an unknown theme were imposed pupils as science reading tasks. Questionnaires and tests concerning cognitive and linguistic functions were used as independent variables in the prediction studies. Two different tests were used as independent variables (for text comprehension) in all of the three studies, and one additional criterion test (writing essays on main ideas in the texts) was applied in the experient. The experiment was organized as a 2x2 factorial design where text type and reading skill were the factors. According to the results, 5 of the 6 hypotheses could not be rejected, i.e., general concept information was the most significant predictor of science text comprehension. Furthermore, text based on a subject known to the reader always surpassed text with an unknown subject as to text comprehension. Similarily, across-domain strategies were more closely related to reading comprehension than domain-specific strategies.RésuméLa question posée était de voir dans quelle mesure des fonctions linguistiques cognitives et des stratégies dans un domaine spécifique pouvaient permettre de prédire la compréhension de textes scientifiques. Six hypothèses ont été formulées et testées dans deux études prédictives (avec 101 élèves de huitième année) et une expérimentation (avec 38 élèves du même âge). Le test standardisé de lecture de Handal a été utilisé pour classer les élèves en bons et médiocres lecteurs. Deux textes ont été utilisés comme tâches de lecture en science: un texte portant sur un sujet connu et un autre portant sur un thème inconnu des élèves. Des questionnaires et des tests concernant les fonctions cognitives et linguistiques ont été utilisés en tant que variables indépendantes prédictives. Dans les trois études deux tests différents ont été utilisés comme variables indépendantes pour la compréhension de texte. L’expérimentation une épreuve de rédaction écrite des idées principales des textes a été utilisée, en plus, comme variable indépendante. L’expérimentation a été organisée selon un plan d’expérience factoriel comportant deux facteurs: le type de texte et les compétences en lecture. Les résultats montrent que 5 des 6 hypothèses sont confirmées, l’information conceptuelle générale étant le prédicteur le plus signifiant de la compréhension d’un texte scientifique. Par ailleurs, a compréhension des textes concernant un sujet connu des lecteurs a toujours dépassé toujours celle des textes concernant un sujet inconnu. De même, les stratégies trans-domaines ont été plus étroitement corrélées à la compréhension de lecture que les stratégies spécifiques au domaine.

The effects of different tasks on children's process and product variables in writing

Abstract The main problem of the reported study was to examine the relation between writing tasks (pictures vs. texts) and childrens strategies used in the writing process, on one side, and their writing products (narratives), on the other. Twenty 12-year-old children were sampled randomly as subjects for the experiment. The experiment was organised as a 2×2×2 three-way factorial design with condition (task variable), group, and gender used as independent variables. After having examined the intercorrelations among a preliminary sample of dependent measurements the number of variables was reduced such that the final sample of dependent measures consisted of three groups of variables: 1) three general strategy variables (attention, feedback, and persistence), 2) six domain-specific strategies, and 3) five measures of the writing products used for the final data analyses. The results of the multivariate analyses indicated that tasks presented as text (input) had significant effects on concentration and persistence (general strategies) and on writing time, frequency of pauses in writing, time for long and short pauses (domain-specific strategies), whereas pictorial input had no substantial effects on the writing process variables under research. On the other hand, pictorial material had significant effects on two of the product variables: accuracy and formal aspects of the writing product. Few significant findings were caused by the group and the gender factors used in the study.