This talk presents empirical data on the benefits of handwriting—relative to typing—for literacy and spelling development and discusses why handwriting may positively influence reading development. Two studies are presented in which 50 pre-readers learned novel letters and words in an artificial orthography, either by handwriting or by typing. Linear mixed models revealed that children in the handwriting group performed better on letter naming, word naming, writing, and word identification tasks. Moreover, regression analyses showed that word decoding accuracy significantly predicted word identification in the handwriting group, but not in the typing group. These findings suggest that writing letters and words by hand supports the development of alphabetic and orthographic skills that are foundational to efficient reading.
This is a CEN event.