Developmental Characteristics in Cursive and Printed Letter-Writing for School-Age Children

Abstract

The current study evaluated the developmental characteristics of printed and cursive letter writing in early school-age children. We predicted fewer age-related changes on spatial and temporal measures in cursive letter writing due to lower explicit timing demands compared with printed letter writing. Thirty children wrote the letters e and l in cursive and printed forms repetitively. For printed letters, significant age effects were seen in temporal consistency, whereas cursive letters showed age-related improvement in spatial consistency. Children tended to have higher consistency for printed handwriting than they did for cursive writing. Because of an overall advantage for printed handwriting, the explicit timing hypothesis was not fully supported. We argue that experiential factors influence the development of handwriting.