Graphomotor Skills: Why Some Kids Hate To Write
Author: Glenda Thorne, Ph.D.

DESCRIPTION OF GRAPHOMOTOR SKILLS

Handwriting is complex perceptual-motor skill that is dependent
upon the maturation and integration of a number of cognitive,
perceptual and motor skills, and is developed through
instruction (Hamstra-Bletz and Blote, 1993; Maeland, 1992).
While a plethora of information exists in lay and professional
literature about many of the common problems experienced by
school age children, difficulty with handwriting is often
overlooked and poorly understood. Students with graphomotor
problems are frequently called "lazy", "unmotivated" and/or
"oppositional" because they are reluctant to produce written
work. Many times, these are the children who dislike school the
most. Because they are sometimes able to write legibly if they
write slowly enough, they are accused of writing neatly "when
they want to". This statement has moral implications and is
untrue; for children with graphomotor problems, neat
handwriting at a reasonable pace is often not a choice.

When required to write, children with written production
problems frequently engage in numerous avoidance behaviors.
They have to go to the bathroom; they need to sharpen their
pencils; they need a Kleenex from their backpack. Sometimes
they just sit and stare. Even disrupting the class and getting
in trouble may be less painful for them than writing. Work that
could be completed in one hour takes three hours because they
put off the dreadful task of writing.

The following paragraphs will attempt to elucidate the various
components of handwriting and the characteristics which
students display when there are breakdowns in these components.
Components of graphomotor or handwriting skills include
visual-perceptual skills, orthographic coding, motor planning
and execution, kinesthetic feedback and visual-motor
coordination.

Visual-Perceptual Skills. Visual-perceptual skills enable
children to visually discriminate among graphic forms and to
judge their correctness. Thus, visual-perceptual skills involve
the ability or capacity to accurately interpret or give meaning
to what is seen. Generally a number of specific skills fall
into this category including visual discrimination, or the
ability to distinguish one visual pattern from another, and
visual closure, or the ability to perceive a whole pattern when
shown only parts of that pattern. Adequate visual-perceptual
skills are a necessary but not sufficient condition for legible
written output.

Orthographic Coding. A second factor important to the
production of legible handwriting is orthographic coding.
Berninger and her colleagues (Berninger, Yates, Cartwright,
Rutberg, Remy and Abbott, 1992) define orthographic coding as
the "ability to represent a printed word in memory and then to
access the whole word pattern, a single letter, or letter
cluster in that representation" (pg. 260). Thus, orthographic
coding refers to the ability to both store in memory and
retrieve from memory letters and word patterns. The
relationship between poor handwriting and orthographic coding
deficits has been empirically established (Berninger et. al.,
1992).

Motor Planning and Execution. A third component of handwriting
is praxis or the ability to plan and execute motor actions or
behavior. Fitts and Posner (1967) describe motor skill
acquisition as proceeding through three stages. The first phase
is called the cognitive or early phase. In this phase, the
learner establishes an understanding of the task and a
cognitive map of the movements required to accomplish the task.
In the second phase, the associated or intermediate phase, the
movement patterns become more coordinated in time and space.
During this phase, proprioceptive feedback (the feedback that
the brain receives from the muscles and nerves) becomes
increasingly important and the importance of visual feedback
decreases. The final phase, the autonomous phase, is
characterized by the development of larger functional units
that are translated into a motor program which then occurs with
minimal conscious attention.

Luria (1966) notes that a motor action begins with an idea
about the purpose of an action and the possible ways in which
this action may be performed. The ideas are stored as motor
engrams. Thus, in order to carry out a motor behavior, we must
have both the idea or image for what must be accomplished
(i.e., the plan) and the ability to match our motor output to
that plan. Therefore, both adequate motor planning and
execution are necessary for handwriting.

Levine (1987) includes in the definition of dyspraxia
difficulty with assigning the various muscles or muscle groups
to their roles in the writing task. This definition focuses on
the execution or output aspect of dyspraxia. According to
Levine, in order to hold a pencil effectively and produce
legible handwriting at an acceptable rate, the fingers must
hold the writing utensil in such a way that some fingers are
responsible for stabilizing the pencil or pen and others are
responsible for mobilizing it. In a normal tripod grasp, the
index finger is responsible for stabilizing the writing
instrument and the thumb and middle finger are responsible for
the mobility of the instrument during writing.

Kinesthetic Feedback. Yet another component of motor control
for legible handwriting produced at an acceptable rate is
feedback of the sensorimotor system, especially kinesthetic
feedback, during the performance of motor actions. Luria (1966)
points out that for effective motor action, there must be
afferent impulses from the body to the brain that inform the
brain about the location and movement of the body. The body
then makes adjustments based on these impulses to alter its
movement pattern until the desired pattern is achieved. Thus,
it is kinesthetic feedback that facilitates a good match
between the motor plan and motor execution. In writing, the
writer has a kinesthetic plan in mind and compares this plan to
the kinesthetic feedback and then either corrects, persists or
terminates the graphomotor pattern (Levine, 1987).

Visual-Motor Coordination. Visual-motor coordination is the
ability to match motor output with visual input. Although it is
the nonvisual or kinesthetic feedback that is crucial for
handwriting, visual feedback is also important. Visual feedback
provides gross monitoring of writing rather than the fine-tuned
monitoring provided by nonvisual feedback. It is this gross
monitoring that prevents us from writing on the desk, crossing
over lines (Levine, 1987) and staying within the margins.

PROBLEMS WITH GRAPHOMOTOR SKILLS

Deficits in Visual-Perceptual Skills. Children with
visual-perceptual problems may have a history of reading
problems because of difficulty with letter and word
recognition. In addition, if a child cannot accurately visually
discriminate the letter b from the letter d, he/she will be
unable to reliably reproduce these letters upon demand. If
students have problems with visual closure, they may have
difficulty with accurate letter formation and handwriting
legibility may be poor. For example, they may print the letter
o with a space in the top, but perceive the letter as closed.
When deficits in visual-perceptual skills are suspected, they
can be readily identified by informal or standardized tests.

Deficits in Orthographic Coding. Students who have trouble with
orthographic coding will often forget how to form certain
letters in the middle of a writing task. They frequently
retrace letters or exhibit false starts or hesitancies as they
write. Observations of their written output may show that they
have formed the same letter several different ways. When asked,
these students can usually report if they have difficulty
remembering what letters look like. Children who cannot
reliably make use of visual recall to form letters and words
often prefer to print rather than write in cursive because
print involves only twenty-six different visual letter
patterns, whereas letters written in cursive have a seemingly
endless number of visual patterns. Their spelling errors may be
phonetic in nature (Levine, 1987, 1994).

Deficits in Motor Planning and Execution. Poor motor planning
and execution is referred to as dyspraxia. Deuel and Doar
(1992) define dyspraxia as the "inability to learn or perform
serial voluntary movements with the proficiency expected for
age and/or verbal intelligence" (pg. 100). Helmer and Myklebust
(1965) discuss the role that memory for motor sequences play in
correctly forming letters when writing. Luria (1966) described
two forms of dyspraxia. The first form involves difficulty in
creating an image of a required motor movement. The second
involves a breakdown in the central nervous system mechanism
that is responsible for putting the plan into action. Thus, the
child has the blueprint for the action/behavior, but has
difficulty implementing it motorically (Levine, 1987).

Ayres (1972, 1975, 1985) suggested that the problem in
developmental dyspraxia is in the neural activity that takes
place prior to motor execution. According to Ayres, dyspraxia
is generally viewed as an output problem because the motor
component is more observable than the sensory component.
However, in her view, dyspraxia is an inability to integrate
sensory and motor information, rather than merely motor
production.

Children who suffer from fine motor dyspraxia show poor motor
coordination. At times, they assign too many muscles to
stabilizing the pencil or pen and too few muscles to mobilizing
it. At other times, they assign too many muscles to mobilizing
the writing utensil and too few muscles to stabilizing it.
Thus, their pencil grips are often inefficient. They may
develop a hooked grip in which they stretch out the tendons in
the back of the arm so that the fingers move very little if at
all during writing. With this grip, they are using the larger
muscles of the wrist and forearm which may be easier to control
than the smaller muscles in the fingers. They often perform
poorly with other fine motor tasks that involve coordinated
motor movements such as tying shoes or holding a fork correctly
(Levine, 1987).

Another pencil grip which suggests fine motor dyspraxia is one
in which the child holds the pencil very tightly and near the
point when writing. Further, students with dyspraxia often
change pencil grips and prefer writing in cursive rather than
print. They do not like to write and complain that their hand
hurts when they write. Writing for them is a labor-intensive
task. Fine motor dyspraxia is frequently associated with speech
production problems because these children often have difficulty
assigning the muscles in the mouth to specific speech sounds
(Levine, 1987, 1994).

Impaired Kinesthetic Feedback. Children with impaired
kinesthetic feedback often develop a fist-like grip of the
writing instrument. With this grip, they extend their thumb
over the index and middle finger, limiting the mobility of the
fingers. They may also press very hard on the paper with the
writing utensil in an attempt to compensate for the lack of
kinesthetic feedback. Further, they may look closely at the
pencil or pen when writing thus attempting to guide the hand
using visual feedback which is a much slower process. This is
why children with impaired kinesthetic feedback may produce
legible handwriting at a greatly reduced pace. As they progress
in school, however, the demands placed on written output are too
great and legibility deteriorates. These are the children who
are often accused of writing neatly "when they want to". They
also often prefer to use mechanical pencils and "scratchy" pens
because these provide more friction on the paper when writing.
They complain that their hand hurts when writing and they do
not like to write. Performance in other fine motor skills may
be adequate or good because many fine motor skills do not place
such reliance on kinesthetic feedback.

Research has shown that tasks which were designed to improve
kinesthetic sensitivity improved handwriting performance more
than a task that involved only practice in handwriting (Harris
and Livesay, 1991).

Deficits in Visual-Motor Coordination. Children with
visual-motor incoordination function much differently than
those with impaired kinesthetic feedback because of the
different demands of certain motor tasks. Poor visual-motor
integration may lead to problems with fine motor tasks that
rely heavily on visual feedback. These include threading a
needle, drawing, painting, craftwork, building things with
blocks, repairing things, playing games such as Nintendo and
using a mouse on a computer.

Complete references are available at:
http://www.cdl.org/resource-library/articles/graphomotor.php?type=subject&id=45


About The Author: Dr. Thorne is the clinical director at the
Center for Development and Learning (http://www.cdl.org), a
nonprofit organization that specializes in the development and
dissemination of research, knowledge, and best practices that
impact teaching and learning. This article and others like it
are available in the "Library" at http://www.cdl.org .