The effect of fine motor skills on handwriting legibility in preschool age children.
Sang-Min Seo
PMID 29545705WHAT IT FOUND
In 52 preschoolers, better fine motor precision and faster in-hand manipulation were linked to more legible Korean alphabet writing.
Fine motor precision was the strongest link, reported at sixty percent. This is association, not proof that training improves handwriting.
Key findings
01Handwriting legibility was positively associated with fine motor precision (r=0.78) and manual dexterity (r=0.49), and negatively associated with Functional Dexterity Test time (r=0.68).
02Stepwise regression reported that fine motor precision had a sixty percent effect on handwriting legibility and Functional Dexterity Test time had a four percent effect.
03The children's mean handwriting legibility score was 17.85 points on a 0-to-24 scale.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study measured children only once, so it cannot show that fine motor skills cause better handwriting. It included only 52 children from one daycare center in Gyeonggi Province, so results may not generalize to other settings or languages. Participants were screened for normal development and visual perception, so findings may not apply to children with motor, cognitive, or visual difficulties. No treatment was delivered or tested, so it gives no evidence that fine motor activities change handwriting. The Discussion extends findings to cerebral palsy and physical therapy, but those children were not studied. The writing task was Korean alphabet copying, so it may not apply to other scripts or languages.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that fine motor training improves handwriting. This study measured associations in 52 preschoolers and did not test an intervention, so it cannot show that activities cause better legibility.