Evolution of graphomotor parameters in Kindergarten children's handwriting

The longitudinal study presented in this chapter focuses on the acquisition of writingskills in a group of preschoolers. Eighteen four-to-five year old preschoolers copied sixletterCatalan words (disyllabic and trisyllabic) on a digitiser. The words were presentedand copied in capital letters. Data were collected at three different times over twoacademic years (February; November; and May). We compiled eight kinematic andperceptual variables in each of the three sessions, including measures of execution time(both on paper and in air), pressure, fluency, number of strokes, gaze lifts to the stimulusand duration of intervals between letters (ILI). These measures were compared over thethree sessions in order to assess the development of handwriting skills.The results show that motor and perceptual parameters developed positively.However, at the last session there was a decrease in the quality of movement execution(longer duration, less fluency, more segmentation of the stroke), which is interpreted interms of the impact that linguistic knowledge has on writing execution. The duration ofthe intervals between letters shows the effect of syllable structure on the programming ofthe stroke at the different sessions of data collection.