Visual-Motor Perception and Handwriting Performance of Students with Mixed Subtype Dyslexia

Abstract

This studyaimed to characterize and compare the visual-motor perception and handwriting performance of students with mixed dyslexia and students with good academic performance. Twenty-six schoolchildren of both sexes participated in this study, aged 9 to 11 years and 11 months old, from fourth and fifth grades of an elementary school in municipal public schools, from an average socioeconomic level, divided into two groups: Group I (GI) composed of 13 students with a multidisciplinary diagnosis of mixed developmental dyslexia and Group II (GII) composed of 13 students with good academic performance from a municipal school and matched according to gender, education, and age to GI. All students in this study were subjected to the application of the following procedures: Developmental Test of Visual Perception III—DTVP-III, Dysgraphia Scale and writing analysis by NeuroScript MovAlyzeR 6.1 software. The results were analyzed statistically using the following tests: Mann-Whitney test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and Friedman test, aiming to verify intragroup and intergroup differences for the variables of interest in the DTVP-III, the Dysgraphia Scale, and the measures of handwriting speed and pressure by the MovAlyzeR software. The results were analyzed statistically at a significance level of 5% (0.050). The results showed that there were statistically significant differences between GI and GII in the parameters of the Dysgraphia Scale, floating lines, irregular spaces between words, junction points, sudden movements, and dimension irregularities. GII showed a superior performance in relation to GI in the variables analyzed with the DTVP-III in visual-motor integration, reduced motricity perception, and general visual perception. There was no statistically significant difference between GI and GII in the variables analyzed by the MovAlyzeR software. The results of this study allowed us to conclude that students with mixed dyslexia present a lower performance profile than the students with good academic performance in general visual perception, reduced motricity visual perception, and visual-motor perception skills, which may be the cause of the quality of dysgraphic writing characterized by floating lines, irregular spaces, junction points, sudden movements, and dimension irregularities.