• Title/Summary/Keyword: sixth grade elementary school students

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COMPARATIVE STUDY UPON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF WRITING BETWEEN THE PATIENTS WITH WRITING DISABILITIES AND NORMAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS (쓰기 장애 환자와 정상 초등학교 학생의 쓰기 특성 비교)

  • Cho, Soo-Churl;Shin, Sung-Woong
    • Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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    • v.12 no.1
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    • pp.51-70
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    • 2001
  • Characteristics of handwriting were investigated and compared between the patients with writing disabilities and normal elementary school pupils. Generally, the heights of the letters of the patients were significantly larger than those of normal children, and letters of the patients were more sparsely distributed than those of controls. The distance between the words were significantly reduced in the patients’ writings, which indicated that patients had much more problems of space-leaving than normal pupils. Letter heights differences were significant across all grades in the patients and normal controls. The heights of the letters decreased as they grew older, and the slope of the decrements were more steeper in normal girls(r=-0.45) than girls with writing disabilities(r=-0.16). Sex differences were found in the letter spacings in low grades(grades 1, 2), that is, the distances between the letters were significantly narrower in the male patients than normal boys in these grades, and the differences were almost indiscriminating in grades 3 through 5, and finally, in sixth grade, letter spacings were signifycantly broader in normal boys than male dysgraphics. In girls, letter spacings were significantly broader in the patients across all grades. These findings supports the hypothesis that male and female writings were qualitatively different and that distinct mechanisms served in boys and girls dysgraphics. Across all grades and sexes, spaces between the words of the patients were significantly broader than normal pupils, which suggested that space-leaving between the words was important in Korean writings. There was trend that letter spacings and word spacings decreased across grades, but in girls, no correlations between the letter spacings and grades were found. Correlation analyses revealed that letter heights and letter spacings had mild correlation(r=0.11-0.15), and that letter spacings and word spacings had robust correlation(r=0.99). Phonological errors were mostly found in last phoneme(Jong-seong), especially double-phoneme(ㄳ, ㄵ, ㄶ, ㄺ, ㄻ, ㄼ, ㄾ, ㄿ, ㅀ, ㅄ), and in the case the sound values changed due to assimilations of phonemes. Semantic errors were rare in both groups. Space-leaving errors were correlated with phonological errors, and more frequent in boys than girls. In conclusion, significant differences existed in the letter heights, letter spacings, word spacings, and frequencies of phonological errors and spaceleaving errors between the patients with writing disabilities and normal pupils. The characteristics of writings changed across grades and the developmental profiles were somewhat quantitatively different between the groups. The differences became obvious from the second-third grades.

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