Writing to dictation and handwriting performance among Chinese children with dyslexia: Relationships with orthographic knowledge and perceptual-motor skills

Abstract The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between writing to dictation, handwriting, orthographic, and perceptual-motor skills among Chinese children with dyslexia. A cross-sectional design was used. A total of 45 third graders with dyslexia were assessed. Results of stepwise multiple regression models showed that Chinese character naming was the only predictor associated with word dictation ( β  = .32); handwriting speed was related to deficits in rapid automatic naming ( β  = −.36) and saccadic efficiency ( β  = −.29), and visual-motor integration predicted both of the number of characters exceeded grid ( β  = −.41) and variability of character size ( β  = −.38). The findings provided support to a multi-stage working memory model of writing for explaining the possible underlying mechanism of writing to dictation and handwriting difficulties.