Comparison of handwriting and typing in the “Mozgásjavító” Elementary School

Abstract

Handwriting is one of the most difficult and finest coordinated motion performance. In our digital world, however, with the spread of computer literacy, the need for handwriting and the primacy of typing versus handwriting is becoming increasingly questionable. Illegible handwriting or exhausting writing itself can negatively affect children’s self-esteem and their performance in school. In case of children with reduced mobility, especially children with fine motoric dysfunction, this issue is even more pronounced. We examined the handwriting and typing performance of primary school students with reduced mobility in copy and dictation tasks (n = 123). We have found that students’ hand functions have a significant influence on pencil gripping and typing method as well as the legibility of handwriting, but is less related to typing performance (R²=22,8%, p=,024).
Students write significantly faster with a computer than with handwriting (18,411 ≥ t ≥ 14,279; p= ,000 and the average difference rate is 3-400 graphemes), but it is also true that children who perform poorly in handwriting would underperform in typing tasks as well and vice versa (,872 ≥ r ≥ ,744). Writing skills of students with reduced mobility are significantly lower than the skills of typically developing students. Findings also point out that students are immediately aware of the spelling mistakes when typing and they correct them right away even without consciously noticing the correction while they do not make error corrections in handwriting - we have found significantly more errors in handwriting tasks than in typing tasks.