ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE published: 20 January 2014 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.01022 Analysis of cursive letters, syllables, and words handwriting in a French second-grade child with Developmental Coordination Disorder and comparison with typically developing children Caroline Jolly 1 * and Edouard Gentaz 1,2 1 Laboratory of Psychology and NeuroCognition - CNRS UMR 5105, University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France 2 Psychology of Sensori-Motor, Affective and Social Development Department, Faculté de Psychologie et des Sciences de l’Education, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland Edited by: Marieke Longcamp, Aix-Marseille University and CNRS, France Reviewed by: Sufen Chen, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA Anna Barnett, Oxford Brookes University, UK *Correspondence: Caroline Jolly, Laboratory of Psychology and NeuroCognition - CNRS UMR 5105, University of Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble et LPNC, BP47, F-38040 Grenoble, France e-mail: caroline.jolly@ upmf-grenoble.fr Poor handwriting is a core deficit in Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD). In a previous study, we compared the evolution of cursive letters handwriting in a girl with DCD throughout her second-grade year with that of typically developing (TD) children. We found that her handwriting evolved much less than that of TD children and remained similar to that of pre-schoolers at all stages, suggesting that her handwriting skills have reached a steady state level. We present here a continuation of this work, in which we focused on the velocity aspects of handwriting in another French child with DCD. Indeed, different velocity patterns have been observed in Chinese and English children with DCD. In the French cursive style of writing, consecutive letters are joined, a major difference with the English script style of writing. We thus analyzed the handwriting of a second-grade French girl with DCD, not only for isolated letters but also for syllables and words, in comparison to that of TD first-graders (6–7 years old; N = 85) and second-graders (7–8 years old; N = 88). Each written track was digitized, and nine kinematic parameters were measured to evaluate writing fluency. Results showed that the productions of the child with DCD were more similar to those of first-graders than to those of second-graders. In line with our previous study, the most discriminative parameters between the child with DCD and TD children were size and mean speed. Moreover, her handwriting was less fluent than that of TD children. In contrast to previous observations, we observed a higher writing velocity of the child with DCD when compared to TD children, whatever the complexity of the item, and no significant difference with TD children in the pausing time during writing. These differences may reflect linguistic specificities. For syllables and words, each letter was treated separately as a single unit, thus reflecting a problem in anticipation and automation. Keywords: handwriting acquisition, developmental coordination disorder, single case study, comparison, typically developing children INTRODUCTION Although it seems an easy task for adults, handwriting is in fact a very complex activity. For instance, handwriting requires not only perceptual-motor skills but also cognitive and linguistic skills (Blöte and Hamstra-Bletz, 1991; Viviani, 1994; Chartrel and Vinter, 2004; Vinter and Zesiger, 2007). The letter to be traced and the corresponding movements are intimately related in handwrit- ing activity. Writing a letter requires to retrieve the letter stored in memory, to access the corresponding motor program associ- ated to its tracing, and to execute this program (Ellis and Young, 1988; Van Galen, 1991). Handwriting learning begins in kinder- garten, at the age of three, and takes several years before complete acquisition (Zesiger, 1995; Bara and Gentaz, 2007, 2010; Bara et al., 2011). At the beginning, handwriting exercises consist in copying tasks and are very similar to drawing. As learning pro- gresses, writing and drawing activities dissociate, and children learn the visual representations of letters, which are used to guide their production, and the motor programs associated to each one. Handwriting is mastered once it is fully automated. At the cognitive level, the developmental changes in the product and the process of handwriting are associated with a shift from a retroactive control of movement based on feedbacks to a proac- tive control (Meulenbroek and van Galen, 1988; Zesiger, 1995; Palluel-Germain et al., 2007). Indeed, at the beginning of learn- ing, movements are slow and essentially guided by visual and kinaesthetic feedbacks. With practice, writing becomes automatic and the control of movement is mostly based on an internal representation of motor acts. Some children never master handwriting despite correct training. Handwriting difficulties in children can be evaluated and diagnosed by using standardized tests such as the BHK (Hamstra-Bletz and Blöte, 1993; Karlsdottir and Stefansson, 2002; www.frontiersin.org January 2014 | Volume 4 | Article 1022 | 1