Graphomotor Intervention Program for Handwriting Difficulties Prevention in Preschool Age
Condition: Typical Development; Risk of Dysgraphia; Dysgraphia
MeSH terms: Agraphia
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      12-30% of children present handwriting difficulties, which has negative repercussions on
      their school career. For this reason, it is fundamental to bet on their prevention. The aim
      of present study is to examine the effects of a graphomotor intervention program on
      graphomotor competences in children in the last year of preschool education. This
      experimental study is a randomized controlled trial. The program will run for 8 weeks (2
      sessions/week of 30 minutes), followed by 6 months of follow-up without intervention.
      Participants will be assessed 1) at baseline, 2) at the end of the program, and 3) after the
      follow-up. Participants will be randomly allocated to two groups: experimental group
      (graphomotor intervention program) and control group.
    

Detailed description: 
      According to estimates, 12 to 30% of children have handwriting difficulties (1), which has
      negative consequences for school success (2). In addition, this is one of the main reasons
      for referral and consultation in psychomotricity in school-age (3), which reflects the
      urgency of acting in this field.

      The need for prevention and early intervention is indisputable (4). Several studies indicate
      that both outweigh the benefits of late intervention, because as time goes on it is
      increasingly difficult to correct handwriting difficulties (5-6).

      Graphomotor skills include the trait, the drawing and the formal handwriting and are related
      to long and complex learning, which requires several years of learning (7-9).

      Today it is known that preschool education represents a very important period for the
      development of these skills (10). In preschool, children spend 42% of the day on paper and
      pencil tasks (11) and it is during this period that handwriting readiness skills are
      developed (12), being a predictor of future school success (12-15). For Beery (16) children
      are not apt to learn to handwrite without first copying the first nine figures of the
      Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI).

      It is based on this that intervention programs have been developed with the aim of promoting
      the development of handwriting readiness skills in preschool age and of preventing possible
      handwriting difficulties at school age (14, 17). These intervention programs have shown
      favourable results in improving the graphomotor skills of preschool children (12, 17-18).

      In most cases only something is done, once the handwriting difficulties are installed. In
      addition, there are few studies dedicated to intervention in graphomotor skills at preschool
      age and to my knowledge, there is no study whose intervention is based on a psychomotor
      approach. Based on this, a graphomotor intervention program with a psychomotor approach was
      developed, by Matias and Vieira (19), who will apply in this study to children in the last
      year of preschool education.
    

Intervention name(s): Graphomotor intervention program
Intervention type(s): Other
Intervention description(s): The graphomotor intervention program aims to promote the development and reinforcement, different skills involved in the learning process of handwriting and has a preventive character. It follows a bodily, playful, multisensory, exploratory (sensory integration) and neuromotor task training approach and focuses on the following intervention domains: segmental awareness, passive relaxation, trunk-limb dissociation, interdigital coordination, attention, planning, spatial organization/orientation and perception.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Double (Participant, Outcomes Assessor)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: Graphomotor intervention program; Preschool children; Graphomotor competences; Prevention