Copying skills in children with and without dyslexia
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Copying skills in children with and without dyslexia Elise Blampain1 · Claire Gosse1 · Marie Van Reybroeck1 Accepted: 22 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract While copying skills are used daily at school and involve spelling abilities, studies examining copying performance in children with dyslexia are very scarce. The present study aims to determine whether children with dyslexia present a specific deficit in their copying processes or if their difficulties in copying are a consequence of their spelling deficit. Nineteen children with dyslexia were compared to two groups of typically developing children: 19 chronological age matched children and 19 spelling age matched children. All children were asked to perform a copying task of 40 words, varying in orthographic complexity. This task was scored on spelling accuracy, handwriting quality and speed, and gaze lifts. Our main results showed that children with dyslexia do have difficulties in copying. They made more spelling errors than their age-matched peers, despite the model provided by the task. Gaze lift analyses revealed that children with dyslexia used different copying strategies compared to their classmates. Globally, children with dyslexia seem to behave like younger children, suggesting that their difficulties arise from their spelling deficit. These findings may have practical implications. Given that children with dyslexia face copying difficulties, one possible way to help them could be to enable them to improve their copying strategies, and not just their spelling skills. Keywords Copying · Dyslexia · Gaze lifts · Handwriting · Spelling
The authors thank all the children and teachers who participated in this study. We would like to offer special thanks to Nathalie Lefèvre for her statistical support. We also thank the master students involved in data collection (Odile Chamberlant and Sophie Vanderbecq). This work was presented at the International Workshop on Reading and Developmental Dyslexia held in 2019 (Donastia-San Sebastian, Spain). * Elise Blampain [email protected] 1
Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain‑la‑Neuve, Belgium
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Introduction Writing is an important skill that impacts everyone’s academic and social development. It requires a long and complex development process throughout primary school. The ability to write involves the mastery of two major skills: spelling retrieval and handwriting production (Rapp, Epstein, & Tainturier, 2002; Van Galen, 1991). In school, one specific activity that allows children to learn spelling and handwriting is the copying task (Martinet & Rieben, 2006). In the French-language school system, children have to copy every day until the end of primary school, when they learn new words, when they write their class diary or when they learn new lessons (Bernardin, 2001; Ministère de l’Education nationale et de la jeunesse, 2018). At the beginning of primary school, children are more engaged in
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