TY - JOUR AU - Rodríguez, C. AU - Villarroel, R. T1 - Predicting Handwriting Difficulties Through Spelling Processes LA - eng PY - 2017 SP - 504 EP - 510 T2 - Journal of Learning Disabilities SN - 0022-2194 VL - 50 IS - 5 PB - SAGE Publications Inc. AB - This study examined whether spelling tasks contribute to the prediction of the handwriting status of children with poor and good handwriting skills in a cross-sectional study with 276 Spanish children from Grades 1 and 3. The main hypothesis was that the spelling tasks would predict the handwriting status of the children, although this influence would decrease with age due to a gradual automatization of handwriting skills. The results confirmed this hypothesis. Another interesting result was that the pattern of pseudoword and irregular word spellings as predictors of handwriting status changed from Grade 1 to Grade 3. In Grade 1, the pseudoword spelling task made a significant contribution, whereas the irregular word spelling task did not. The opposite pattern was found in Grade 3. These results may be a consequence of progressive acquisition of orthographic representations. The orthographic role of the task of writing the alphabet in order from memory in the prediction model was also analyzed. The writing of the alphabet in order from memory task made a significant contribution to the prediction of handwriting status of the children beyond the orthographic influence of spelling tasks. The additional effect of this task on the prediction of handwriting status is presumably due to the fact that this measure is based on fluency. DO - 10.1177/0022219416633863 UR - https://portalciencia.ull.es/documentos/5ee0be1d2999527595f952b4 DP - Dialnet - Portal de la Investigación ER -