A comparison of educational self-regulation strategies and cognitive failures in students afflicted with dysgraphia and normal students Nasrollah Veysi* 1 , Ali Taghinezhad 2 , Nasram Shayan 3 ,Mahboobeh Azadikhah 4 1 Department of Psychology and Education of Exceptional Children, Allameh Tabatabi’ee University, Tehran, Iran 2Department of foreign languages and linguistics, shiraz University, shiraz, Iran 3 Department of Neuropsychology, American World UNIVERSITY (AWU) 4 Department of Fars Province Burea of Education And Training ABSTRACT This study seeks to compare educational self-regulatory strategies and cognitive failures in students afflicted with dysgraphia and normal students. This research is a comparative study based upon the case-witness methodology. The research study of this study included all the male students between 9 to 12 years old with and without dysgraphia disorder in Tehran in the academic year 2014-15. The subjects of the study included 30 male students between 9 to 12 with dysgraphia disorder in Tehran selected through multistep cluster sampling and 30 normal students selected based on the cloning method (in terms of age, educational base, soci-economic status). Self- regulation in learning and cognitive failure questionnaires were used to collect data. The results of the MANCOVA multivariable analysis indicated a significant difference between the two groups of the students in terms of self- regulatory learning and cognitive failures (P<0.001). We may conclude that students afflicted with dysgraphia have higher levels of distraction and problems associated with memory which are often ignored in school. On the other hand, self-regulatory management as a key factor plays a major role in the educational success of kids, adolescents and adults. Keywords: self-regulatory learning, cognitive failure, dysgraphia, students Introduction Writing is a complicated neural procedure requiring synchronization of the brain’s multiple mechanisms. Writing requires the stimulation and combination of multiple information resources, attention, memory, motor skills, language and cognition. Dysgraphia is a special learning disability which influences acquisition of the written language and use of written language for thought expression. Dysgraphia is a certain state in which writing the alphabets by hands is damaged in such a way that problems are caused in handwriting and, sometimes, spelling (Key, 2006). Students with dysgraphia have also problems in the following fields: calligraphy and writing coherence, the accuracy and correctness of the alphabets and written vocabularies, matching and synchronizing spelling, appropriate ordering and organization in writing (Deuel, 1995; as quoted by Abkenar, Ashoori, 2013). On the other hand, writing is a really challenging process in many people, especially students with dysgraphia; even skillful writers sometimes face difficulty designing, revising, and evaluating their writings. It is, therefore, no surprise that many of the students have problems with writing; for example, the recent studies have yielded this result that out of each 5 elementary students, only one acquires the knowledge and skills required for writing (Santagelo, Harris & Graham, 2008). The prevalence of dysgraphia is not clear but, similar to dyslexia, it is reported to be 4% of the school-aged children (DSM-IV, 2007; translated by Rezaie, 2009). As the results of studies indicate, students with learning disabilities show significantly higher levels of cognitive failures than normal students (Mikaili, Bagian Kooleh Marz, Maghsoud and Sari Nasirloo, 2013).