| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 職能治療學系碩博士班 === 100 === Handwriting is a very important and basic ability for children mastering their school-life and academic performance. Numerous tools have been developed for evaluating various aspects of handwriting performances, such as legibility, writing speed and grip forms, etc. However, few investigations using quantitative descriptions to evaluate the kinetics of handwriting were found in the literature owing to the lack of suitable assessment tools.
Hence, this study quantified the kinetic performance of handwriting tasks with 5 to 12 years old children via a custom Force Acquisition Pen (FAP) system. The purposes of this study were: 1) to investigate the effect of age and gender on handwriting kinetics, 2) to study the effect of task differences on handwriting kinetics, and 3) to explore the relationship between children’s handwriting kinetics and the performance of fine motor tests among 5 to 12 years old children.
This study recruited 181 children from age 5 to 12, including 39 children from the top class in kindergarten and 142 children from Grade 2, 4, and 6 of elementary school in Tainan and Kaohsiung. A series of tracing tasks including lines (horizontal/vertical/ oblique), circles and numbers were administered to each child. While the children were asked to trace strokes, the contact force between the pen-tip to writing surface as well as digits to the pen-barrel were collected simultaneously with the FAP. The parameters, Modulation Range (MR), Number of Force Fluctuations (NFF), Impulse (I), Impulse Ratio (IR), were designed for describing the kinetic relationships between hand, pen and writing surface. In addition, the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency performance-2 (BOT-2) was used to measure children’s fine motor skills which provided the information to explore the relationship between the fine motor skills and handwriting performance. The kinetic results indicated the girls wrote faster than the boys did. The elder children showed better writing fluency, more mature force applying pattern and used less time to write than the younger children did. There was a moderate relationship (r= -0.549~ -0.636, p〈.001) between Manual Dexterity scores and NFF which determined that handwriting may be relevant to the skills of manual dexterity. IR results were thumb 〉 index finger 〉 middle finger (0.46±0.07 〉 0.32±0.07 〉 0.22±0.08) which indicated that middle finger plays as a stabilizer but the thumb and index finger play as the controllers when performing the writing tasks. The results of writing kinetics were divided into 4 categories (by age) as the developmental norms for 5 to 12 years old children.
The findings of this study may provide a reference for therapists and teachers planning interventions for children with handwriting problems. Recommendations for future studies may include the design of various pen styles (barrel size or shape) for further investigation the handwriting performances in depth and also combination of motion capture system to integrate the kinematics and kinetics of handwriting.
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