J Adult Dev (2011) 18:114–121
DOI 10.1007/s10804-011-9121-3
Handwriting Difficulties and Their Assessment in Young Adults
with DCD: Extension of the DASH for 17-to 25-Year-Olds
Anna L. Barnett • Sheila E. Henderson •
Beverly Scheib • Joerg Schulz
Published online: 26 January 2011
 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011
Abstract Handwriting difficulties are common in children
with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and fre-
quently continue into adulthood. In spite of increased com-
puter use, handwriting remains an essential everyday life
skill. The Detailed Assessment of Speed of Handwriting
(DASH) provides an objective measure of handwriting per-
formance for students aged 9–16 years. No equivalent test
for adults exists. The aim of this study is to explore devel-
opmental trends beyond the age of 16 on the five tasks
included in the DASH and to describe the employment of
these data in an extension of the test for 17-to 25-year-olds
(DASH 17?). A case study is included to illustrate its use in
the assessment of young adults with DCD. Three hundred
and ninety-three students between the ages of 17 and 25
completed the test. The sample was selected to represent the
population of UK students in post-16 education. Statistically
significant, but overall modest developmental trends in
handwriting performance were found for all tasks. Depend-
ing on the task, the year-on-year average increase in per-
formance followed a linear or non-linear trend. Gender
effects were generally small. DASH 17? will provide useful
information on any individual whose handwriting is causing
concern, including those with, or suspected of having DCD.
A. L. Barnett (&)
Department of Psychology, Oxford Brookes University,
Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane, Oxford OX3 0BP, UK
e-mail: abarnett@brookes.ac.uk
S. E. Henderson
B. Scheib
School of Psychology and Human Development,
Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK
J. Schulz
Department of Psychology, University of Hertfordshire,
Hertfordshire, UK
123
Keywords Developmental coordination disorder

Handwriting
DASH
Handwriting test

Handwriting speed
Introduction
Handwriting difficulties are extremely common in children
with DCD and can be devastating in their knock-on effects.
Whether one asks the children, their parents, teachers or
therapists, handwriting is almost certain to be listed among
the problems perceived as directly affecting progress in
school (Mandich et al. 2003; Miller et al. 2001). Although
our knowledge of children with DCD has grown expo-
nentially over the last 20 years, the developmental course
beyond childhood remains relatively unexplored. From the
little we do know, however, it is clear that handwriting
difficulties remain as a central feature in adulthood
(Cousins and Smyth 2003). When coupled with generalised
movement difficulties, low self-esteem (Losse et al. 1991)
and even depression have been reported as associated
effects (Rasmussen and Gillberg 2000).
Handwriting as a Skill for Life
With the ever increasing use of computers in all aspects of
everyday life, it is often suggested that handwriting is an
obsolescent skill. At the present time, however, a cogent
argument in favour of continuing to teach handwriting
alongside other basic skills such as reading and mathe-
matics can easily be mounted (e.g. Florey 2009).
In most schools, regular assessment continues to be based
on handwritten work and writing demands in terms of
recording information (e.g. note taking), and communicating
to others typically increase as a student progresses through the
Extension of the DASH
education system. In colleges and universities, writing
demands vary depending on the course taken. Whereas
practical, vocational courses such as plumbing or hairdressing
generally involve only short handwritten assessments, more
academic subjects involve lengthy coursework assignments
and handwritten examinations. A recent attempt to introduce
computers to replace handwritten examinations in a university
setting revealed numerous problems yet to be solved (Mogey
et al. 2008). At present, therefore, it would seem that both
handwriting and computer skills are required if a young person
is to progress satisfactorily through life.
Support for Students with Handwriting Difficulties
Despite the fact that handwriting difficulties are so com-
mon in children with DCD, few objective measures of
either legibility or speed exist. In contrast to tests such as
the Movement ABC-2 (Henderson et al. 2007) and the
Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (Bruininks
and Bruininks 2005), which provide broad-based measures
of motor performance, handwriting, being a taught skill,
needs to be assessed in a highly focussed way so that direct
intervention can be planned. The lack of a suitable measure
for children of school age prompted the development of the
Detailed Assessment of Speed of Handwriting or DASH
(Barnett et al. 2007), a test which provides an objective
measure of speed of performance along with a set of
guidelines for observing aspects of legibility.
In many countries, resources are available in educational
settings to support students with difficulties. In the United
Kingdom, for example, students with a formal diagnosis
such as DCD or dyslexia may receive support from their
educational institution in the form of special examination
arrangements such as extra time or use of a computer. They
may also be eligible for financial support that facilitates the
purchase of equipment (e.g. laptops) and/or assistance with
study skills. Many students find such support invaluable as
it allows them to fulfil their academic potential in a system
which they would otherwise find hard to cope with.
In the United Kingdom, DASH has proved popular in
schools as a means of identifying those with handwriting
difficulties and determining their eligibility for support.
The test includes four writing tasks, each with differing
demands which collectively offer an overview of the kinds
of handwriting tasks a child might be expected to perform
in an educational setting. There is also a fifth, ‘graphic
speed’ task providing a purer measure of perceptual motor
skill. The DASH provides standard scores for each task, a
total standardised score of handwriting speed, plus a profile
of performance across tasks. At present, the test only
provides norms for children aged 9 through 16 years, but
the need for an equivalent test for older students has been
evident for some time.
115
Data on handwriting speed are available from several
countries, including Australia (Wallen et al. 1996), the
USA (Graham et al. 1998), and Ireland (Killeen et al.
2006). As might be expected, a consistent trend that
emerges from all of these investigations is that speed
increases as children get older. However, most of these
studies provide developmental data on only one task (such
as sentence copying), and none provide data on students
over the age of 18. The aim of the present study is to
explore the developmental trends on the five original
DASH tasks for students up to the age of 25 and to
determine the best way to present these normative data in
an extension of the test. Previously, we have found only
small differences in performance attributable to gender. In
this study, differences between men and women will also
be examined. Since this special issue focuses on DCD and
young adulthood, we present a case study, which shows
how the DASH extension might be used to make the life of
such a young person more manageable.
United Kingdom Extension of the DASH
The Standardisation Sample
In order to obtain a sample that represented many different
elements of post-16 education, a quota sampling procedure
was used to select students in the proportions specified by
official statistics. The selection variables employed were
the following: the proportions of individuals on academic
or vocational courses at schools, colleges and universities,
geographical location, race/ethnicity and subject of study.
The final sample of 393 students was made up of 199 men
(50.6%) and 194 women (49.4%) ranging in age from 17 to
25 years 11 months inclusive. For full details, see the
DASH 17? manual (Barnett et al. 2010).
The Testing Procedure
Ethical approval for the study was obtained from Oxford
Brookes University. Staff from each participating educa-
tional institution circulated information about the project
along with a consent form to the appropriate students. The
consent form requested the student’s date of birth, gender,
race/ethnicity, course and subject of study, information on
their use of English, and whether or not they considered
themselves to have a physical, sensory or learning dis-
ability. Students were admitted to the sample only if they
could speak and understand English. Those who recorded a
disability and/or students receiving special needs support
were not excluded from testing.
Participants were tested in groups of between 5 and 25.
Testers were trained in the administration of the DASH,
123
116 A. L. Barnett et al.

and testing was carried out between January 2009 and (i.e. linear, quadratic, cubic). Pairwise comparisons of
March 2010. adjacent groups were employed as follow-up analyses with
Bonferroni adjusted p-values. The assumptions of nor-
Measures mality and variance homogeneity were checked using
boxplots, the skewness index and Levene’s test. No serious
The rationale for and development of the original DASH violations were found. The significance level for all sta-
tasks is outlined elsewhere (Barnett et al. 2009). Pilot work tistical tests was set at 5%.
indicated that only a minor adaptation to one task was
needed to ensure the test was suitable for use with students
over 17. Prompts provided for the task involving free Results
writing were changed to make the topics more relevant to
older students. Apart from this minor adaptation, all tasks Developmental Trends in Performance on the DASH
were administered and scored as described in the original Tasks
test manual (Barnett et al. 2007) and are outlined below:
As Figs. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 show, the year-on-year differences
Copy Best: The student is required to repeatedly copy
in average performance are overall rather small. There are,
the sentence ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy
however, discernable differences in pattern between tasks.
dog’ for 2 min in their ‘best’ handwriting. The number
On the Free Writing task, for example, the means seem to
of words produced is recorded and divided by two to
follow a clear linear trend upwards with increasing age. By
give a ‘word per minute’ score.
contrast, the means of the Copy Best and Copy Fast tasks
Copy Fast: As above, the student is required to
seem to follow a non-linear trend with average perfor-
repeatedly copy the sentence ‘The quick brown fox
mance reaching a ceiling after age 18. These develop-
jumps over the lazy dog’ for 2 min, but here they are
mental trends were investigated using one-way ANOVA
instructed to write as quickly as possible but make sure
with polynomial contrasts as follow-up analyses. Statisti-
that every word is readable. The number of words
cally reliable mean differences between age in years were
produced is recorded and divided by two to give a ‘word
found for all tasks, with g2 between 4 and 8% suggesting
per minute’ score.
modest to medium effect sizes; Copy Best, F(8,384) =
Alphabet Writing: The student is required to repeatedly
4.24, p \ .001, g2 = .08; Copy Fast, F(8,384) = 3.29,
write out the letters of the alphabet from memory for
p = .001, g2 = .06; Alphabet, F(8,384) = 2.10, p = .03,
1 min, using lower case (not capital letters). The number
g2 = .04; Free Writing, F(8,384) = 3.61, p \ .001,
of correctly sequenced lower case letters is recorded.
g2 = .07; Graphic Speed, F(8,384) = 3.09, p = .002,
Free Writing: Following a short period of thinking/
g2 = .06.
planning time, the student is required to write on the
For the Free Writing task, only the linear trend com-
topic of ‘My Life’ for 10 min, marking their script every
ponent was significant (p \ . 001) revealing a weak degree
2 min. A prompt sheet is available throughout, listing
of linearity (r = .26) in the year-on-year increase in
suggested topics for writing. The total number of legible
words produced is recorded and divided by ten to give a
‘word per minute’ score.
Graphic Speed: The student is required to draw X shapes
for 1 min in a series of printed circles, following
guidelines for accurate production (in terms of the size
and orientation of the lines). The number of correctly
produced Xs is recorded.
The first four are the core tasks used in the DASH to
calculate a total composite score of handwriting speed,
while the ‘Graphic Speed’ task provides a separate measure
of perceptual motor performance.

Data Analysis

Developmental trends in performance on the tasks were

investigated using ANOVA with polynomial contrasts Fig. 1 Copy Best raw scores for each age year

123
Extension of the DASH
Fig. 2 Copy Fast raw scores for each age year
Fig. 3 Alphabet Writing raw scores for each age year
Fig. 4 Free Writing raw scores for each age year
117
Fig. 5 Graphic Speed raw scores for each age year
average performance. Similarly, on the Alphabet task, only
the linear trend was found to be significant (p = .006) with
an even weaker degree of linearity (r = .16). Evidence for
a ceiling effect in performance was found for the Copy
Best and Copy Fast tasks as both the linear and the qua-
dratic trend components reached significance (Copy Best
linear, p \ .001, quadratic, p = .04; Copy Fast linear,
p = .002, quadratic, p = .01). However, the strength of
both non-linear relationships was also rather weak (Copy
Best, R = .27; Copy Fast, R = .24). For the Graphic Speed
task, the only significant trend component was the cubic
(p = .02), suggesting an irregular pattern in performance
over the age span studied.
Establishing Broader Age Bands for the Generation
of Norms
Inspection of the sample sizes and pattern of means across
the age years suggested that three broader age bands should
be used for the generation of norm tables: 17–18 years,
19–21 years and 22–25 years. With the means of these age
bands close to their mid-points (i.e. 17.5, 20 and 23.5) and
the percentages of men and women close to 50% in all
three (v2(df = 2) = 1.26, p = .53), this gave large enough
samples in each for the calculation of more stable standard
scores.
Descriptive statistics for these broader age bands are
shown in Table 1. Almost all skewness and kurtosis figures
are close to zero, suggesting near-perfect symmetrical
distributions. ANOVAs performed on these data revealed
significant age band differences in performance for each
task: Copy Best, F(2,390) = 16.72, p \ .001, g2 = .08;
Copy Fast, F(2,390) = 11.68, p = .001, g2 = .06; Alpha-
bet, F(2,390) = 6.25, p = .002, g2 = .03; Free Writing,
123
118 A. L. Barnett et al.

Table 1 Descriptive statistics for the DASH 17? tasks for each age Gender Differences
band
Age group N Mean SD Skewness Kurtosis Table 3 displays the means and SDs for men and women in
each age band for each task. Between subject ANOVA for
Copy best (words per min) each task with gender and age group as the two factors
17–18 years 166 24.31 5.54 -.072 -.011 revealed a statistically reliable main effect in favour of
19–21 years 144 26.73 5.46 .054 .238 girls for the Alphabet task (F(1, 387) = 10.87, p = .001;
22–25 years 83 28.21 4.65 -.119 -.495 partial g2 = 3%), but the effect size was rather modest
Total 393 26.02 5.55 -.104 .036 Cohen’s d = .39). The other significant main effect for
Copy fast (words per min) gender on the Copy Fast task was also in favour of girls
17–18 years 166 32.98 5.77 -.104 .071 (F(1,387) = 5.09, p = .03; partial g2 = 1%), but the effect
19–21 years 144 35.57 5.33 -.193 .231 size was even more modest (Cohen’s d = .30). A signifi-
22–25 years 83 36.10 5.50 .265 -.571 cant but small interaction effect was revealed only for the
Total 393 34.59 5.71 -.102 .051 Graphic Speed and for the Free Writing task, and both are
Alphabet writing (letters per min) attributable to a very modest crossover effect of gender
17–18 years 166 79.60 24.45 .152 -.511 across the three age bands.
19–21 years 144 86.71 21.44 .025 -.588
22–25 years 83 88.77 18.25 .382 -.089 Relationships Between Task Performance Scores
Total 393 84.14 22.47 .027 -.403
Free writing (word per min) Pearson correlations were calculated for the total sample
17–18 years 166 23.54 5.43 .153 -.133 (N = 393) to gauge the degree of similarity in performance
19–21 years 144 25.26 4.99 -.171 -.129 on the five tasks (see Table 4). All four core tasks are
22–25 years 83 26.94 4.82 -.054 .789 substantially intercorrelated, suggesting an underlying
Total 393 24.89 5.30 -.054 -.095 common ability these tasks are tapping and hence a suffi-
Graphic speed (number correct Xs) cient amount of convergent validity. By contrast, the cor-
17–18 years 166 42.66 12.68 .251 -.318 relations of the Graphic Speed task with the core tasks are
19–21 years 144 48.97 15.45 -.224 -.109 all very modest, suggesting that this task is not a strong
22–25 years 83 46.19 14.99 -.264 .335 indicator of handwriting speed.
Total 393 45.70 14.52 -.011 -.091

F(2,390) = 12.61, p \ .001, g2 = .06; Graphic Speed,
F(2,390) = 7.48, p = .001, g2 = .04. Follow-up analyses,
presented in Table 2, showed statistically reliable differ-
ences between age bands 17–18 and 19–21 for all tasks.
However, only on the Copy Best and Free Writing tasks
were the differences between the age bands 19–21 and
22–25 significant. The magnitudes of these mean differ-
ences were rather modest overall, amounting to at most ‘ a
standard deviation suggesting a medium effect size.
An Illustrative Case Study: Use of the DASH 171
to Apply for a Disabled Student Allowance
in the United Kingdom
Greg is a 20-year-old undergraduate student studying
Media Studies and Japanese at a university in the United
Kingdom. He has an existing diagnosis of Dyspraxia,
which (in his words) means ‘‘I am severely clumsy and
have difficulty with organisation’’. When Greg arrived at

Table 2 Follow-up analysis for

Task Age band (1) Age band (2) Mean difference (95% CI) p
the ANOVAs for each age band
Copy best 17–18 19–21 2.4 (1.2–3.6) .001
Copy best 19–21 22–25 1.4 (.3–2.9) .05
Copy fast 17–18 19–21 2.5 (1.3–3.8) .001
Copy fast 19–21 22–25 .6 (-.9–2.1) .45
Alphabet writing 17–18 19–21 7.1 (2.1–12.1) .005
Alphabet writing 19–21 22–25 2.1 (-3.9–8.0) .50
Free writing 17–18 19–21 1.7 (.6–2.9) .004
Free writing 19–21 22–25 1.7 (.3–3.1) .02
Graphic speed 17–18 19–21 6.3 (3.1–9.5) .001
p-values are Bonferroni Graphic speed 19–21 22–25 -2.7 (-6.6–1.1) .16
adjusted

123
Extension of the DASH 119

Table 3 Means (SDs) for males and females on the 5 DASH 17? tasks
Age bands Sex Copy best Copy fast Alphabet writing Free writing Graphic speed

17–18 years Male 23.29 31.87 75.94 22.29 40.69

n = 89 (5.28) (5.83) (24.06) (5.36) (10.81)
Female 25.49 34.27 83.83 24.99 44.94
n = 77 (5.64) (5.46) (24.36) (5.16) (14.29)
19–21 years Male 26.59 34.73 79.88 23.86 45.25
n = 68 (6.16) (5.76) (20.09) (5.31) (14.34)
Female 26.86 36.32 92.81 26.50 52.30
n = 76 (4.78) (4.83) (20.89) (4.36) (15.74)
22–25 years Male 28.02 36.13 87.83 27.13 48.69
n = 42 (4.99) (5.91) (17.93) (4.79) (14.04)
Female 28.40 36.07 89.73 26.75 43.63
n = 41 (4.33) (5.11) (18.75) (4.89) (15.66)

Table 4 Pearson correlations between performance scores on the 5 Alphabet Writing task (SS: 5), and the letters were gen-
DASH 17? tasks erally poorly formed and untidy, an observation relevant to
Copy Copy Alphabet Free his difficulty learning Kanji. For the first 4 min of the Free
best fast writing writing Writing task, he wrote continuously and in an engaging
style. After this time, however, he wrote in short bursts,
Copy fast .730*
stopping frequently to shake and rub his writing hand. The
Alphabet .547* .595*
writing content of his text then became rather disjointed. Conse-
Free writing .535* .647* .545* quently, his speed profile across the 10-min period showed
Graphic speed .283* .325* .340* .272* a clear decline. On the Graphic Speed task, Greg worked
quite fast and marked many circles, but he made frequent
* Correlation is significant at the .01 level (two tailed)
errors that led to a low score.
Greg obtained a score on the Adult DCD/Dyspraxia
university, the student services arranged for him to be seen Checklist (Kirby et al. 2010) indicating ‘probable DCD’.
by a specialist assessor to determine his eligibility for On the Movement ABC-2 Test (Henderson et al. 2007), his
support and identify his particular needs. Prior to his formal total score fell at the 9th percentile on norms developed for
assessment, Greg reported having difficulty in keeping up students age 16 (the ceiling for this test).
with his studies because he: In the United Kingdom where Greg was a student, it was
• found it hard to write quickly enough in lectures and essential that he met the criteria for DCD in order for a
experienced pain and fatigue after trying to take notes Disability Student Allowance to be awarded. Together with
in an hour-long lecture; his scores on the other tests, Greg’s total score on DASH
• had difficulty learning the pictographs in Kanji script, 17? strongly suggested that a diagnosis of DCD was
required in his study of the Japanese language; appropriate. In addition, his profile across the tasks brought
• worried about not being able to complete the written to light weaknesses that led to a recommendation that he be
examinations at the end of the year, concerned that his granted 25% extra time and permission to use a word
writing would be too slow and hard for others to read. processor in any written examination to help him cope with
his motor difficulties.
When formally assessed on the DASH 17?, Greg
obtained a total standard score of 671 placing him below
the 5th percentile for his age. Although he managed rea-
Discussion
sonably well on the Copy Best task (standard score, SS: 8),
he was not able to increase the speed of his writing when
The beginning of the twentieth century might be regarded
asked to write faster (SS: 3), thus confirming his own
as a marker for recognition of children who doctors and
observation that he had not developed a fast note-taking
teachers found puzzling because their development was so
style that he could use in lectures. He was slow on the
uneven. In spite of having cognitive abilities within the
1
Total standard scores have a mean of 100 and SD of 15; Task normal range, their motor or speech development might be
standard scores have a mean of 10 and SD of 3. delayed, their attentional capacity might seem limited, and

123
120
their inability to become literate or numerate had their
teachers in despair. As soon as reports of such children
began to emerge in the literature, difficulty with hand-
writing stood out as one of the most distressing features
(e.g. Orton 1937). This picture has not changed, and the
separate bodies of literature on DCD (the focus of this
special issue), specific language impairment, dyslexia,
ADHD, and Asperger Syndrome continue to highlight the
negative effects of handwriting difficulties throughout the
lifespan.
In response to the need for an objective measure of
handwriting difficulty, we elected to focus on handwriting
speed as one dimension of the problem and developed the
DASH, which contains norms for children between 9 and
16 (Barnett et al. 2007). The aim of this study has been to
explore developmental trends beyond the age of 16 on the
five tasks included in the DASH and to describe the
employment of these data in an extension of the test for
17-to 25-year-olds.
Surprisingly, little is known about speed of handwriting
beyond school age. As noted earlier, data on how fast
young children can write the alphabet or copy a sentence
are available from several different countries but peters out
at about 18. There is then a large gap until data on adults
with different kinds of neurological impairment emerge. In
the original DASH, there were strong developmental trends
between the ages of 9 and 16 years, with year-on-year
gains in performance for the four core tasks. In this study,
we have been able to show that improvements in perfor-
mance, albeit small, do continue at least until age 25. More
importantly, however, our results showed that such
improvement is task dependent with significant differences
in pattern across age for the tasks examined. For example,
whereas the statistical analyses, which allowed us to
specify the precise form/nature of the changes occurring
with age change suggested that performance on the copy-
ing tasks levelled off after the age of 18, speed of pro-
duction on the alphabet and free writing tasks continued to
increase linearly right up to age 25. It is possible that
continued improvement on the free writing task is simply
due to the practice that students get on essay writing, but
this does not account for the continued increase in speed on
the alphabet task. Clearly, this is a finding that requires
further investigation as the practical implications are far
reaching. If we were to assess a young adult only on a
short, simple, copying task, a ‘‘motor’’ difficulty that
increased as the cognitive and temporal demands of the
task increase might not be recognised.
Having shown that the DASH tasks were sensitive to
age beyond 16, the next step was to decide how best to use
these data to provide norms for this population. Since the
number of students tested within some age groups was
rather small and larger numbers generally give a more
123
A. L. Barnett et al.
regular normal distribution and therefore increase the sta-
bility of norms provided, our first strategy was to combine
individual age groups into three broad age bands. Careful
selection of these age bands ensured that there were equal
numbers of men and women in each, and all relevant
variables were balanced. Separate norms tables were then
generated for these three age bands.
In the area of motor performance, gender differences are
well documented across the age range, but they vary not
only from task to task but also from one age group to
another. In the original DASH, we found significant main
effects for gender on each of the four language-based tasks,
with girls writing faster than boys in all cases, a finding
supported recently by Stainthorp and Rauf (2009). By
contrast, in the current study, we found significantly faster
performance in women for only two tasks, with the abso-
lute group differences being generally rather small.
The question of how one deals with gender differences
in standardised tests is not an easy one as it related to test
fairness, a central issue in modern test construction (APA
1999). Some tests respond to gender differences by pro-
viding separate norms for males and females. In the
original DASH, we took the view that this would be
counter-productive, mainly for practical reasons. In state
examinations around the world, men are not given more
time than women because women write faster, so there is
no reason to change the goal posts when using a test which
is being used to decide on whether a candidate qualifies for
extra time during those examinations. The fact that the
gender differences also appear to be less pronounced in
adulthood confirms our view that combined norms are most
appropriate.
The significant positive correlations found between the
four core tasks are in line with the notion of convergent
validity as reported in the original DASH and once again
supports the use of a composite score to measure overall
performance and define cut-off scores indicating a ‘‘sig-
nificant’’ handwriting difficulty. As we have shown in our
case study, the DASH 17? total score might be used as part
of a diagnostic protocol for DCD. There is a great need for
assessment instruments suitable for young adults suspected
of having DCD, and the DASH 17? will at least partially
fill this gap.
The case study of Greg illustrated how useful other data
derived from the DASH tasks can be. In particular, his
inability to change his speed of writing and his profile on
the free writing task showed how difficult it would be for
him to reveal his true ability in a long examination. In the
DASH, the Graphic Speed task did not correlate highly
with the other four tasks, all of which have a language
dimension. This was also true in this study. Clinicians often
comment that handwriting difficulties do occur in the
absence of a more global motor difficulty. In Greg’s case, a
Extension of the DASH
more generalised movement difficulty had already been
noted and was confirmed by his poor performance on the
graphic speed task. Although ‘‘passing’’ on the graphic
speed task could not by itself confirm that a handwriting
problem was independent of other movement difficulties,
when coupled with other data on motor performance it will
act as a pointer for how to proceed with further testing (e.g.
the problem may lie more with spelling).
In sum, the DASH 17? should provide valuable data on
any young person whose handwriting is cause for concern.
In the area of DCD, it will contribute to the diagnostic
process. Where other diagnoses, such as dyslexia, have
already been given, being able to quantify the degree of
difficulty in handwriting should ensure that this aspect of
the student’s problems is not overlooked.
Acknowledgments We are grateful to Pearson Assessment for
funding this work. We thank all of the students who participated in
the study and our testers who administered the tests and scored the
many scripts. Special thanks go to Lauren McCartney for her help and
support throughout the project.
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