Relevant Annotated Bibliography

Compiled by Susan Thompson, OTR

 
 

Bergmann, Kerstin P. (1990). Incidence of atypical pencil grasps among nondysfunctional adults American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 44. (pp. 736-740)

  • 447 Subjects
  • Tripod-86%
  • Lateral Tripod- 10%


Jaffe(1987)- Influence of grip on legibility, speed, and fatigue in adult handwriting -
no significant difference between dynamic tripod and other grasps. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston Univ.

 


Keogh and Sugden (1985) Movement skill development. New York: Macmillian.

  • Ability to form letters has less to do with grasp and more to do with how much the grasp allows for use of intrinsic hand musculature.
  • **Need to shift emphasis from focus on prehensile pattern to elements of mature hand control.

Berninger, Virginian W. & Rutberg, Judith (1992). Relationship of finger function to beginning writing: application to diagnosis of writing disabilities Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 34. (198-215)

4 Parts: finger lifting, spreading ,localization, recognition. Finger succession task had best validity for assessing beginning writing - handwriting probably measures motor planning of complex fine motor movements (dexterity and praxis). Use finger succession and alphabet to identify 'at-risk' children - 1st, 2nd, 3rd graders. Lower case, no prompt.

 

Breslin, D. M. M., & Exner, C. E. (1999). Construct validity of the in hand manipulation test: a discriminate analysis with children without disability and children with spastic diplegia American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 53. (381-386).

In-hand manipulation test = fine motor
3 years to 8 years 11 months with disabilities


Case-Smith, Jane (2002). Effectiveness of school-based therapy intervention or handwriting. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 56. (17-25)

Cornhill & Case-Smith (1996)
- Visual motor integration correlates to handwriting
- In-hand manipulation correlates factors that relate to good and poor handwriting; AJOT 50; 732-739

Comparison of In-Hand Manipulation skills in children with and without fine motor delays - Case-Smith
-30 Children age 4-6 with delays and without
Children with decreased in hand manipulation have decreased fine motor skills

Exner (1990) The zone of proximal development in in-hand manipulation skills of nondysfunctional 3 and 4 year old children. American Journal of Occupational Therapists 44, 884-891


Cornhill, H., & Case-Smith, J. (1996). Factors that relate to good and poor handwriting American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 50. (732-739)

Kinesthesia
Motor Planning
Eye hand coordination
Visuomotor integration
In hand manipulation
-49 typically developing first graders

  • -judged good/poor handwriters by teachers
  • 26 good 23 poor
  • -Minnesota handwriting test

Assessment tools

  • MAC, VMI, translation and rotation, MHT
  • Scores were compared between good and poor handwriters.

For each test, those with good handwriting scored higher than those with poor.


63.7% translation, 5.9% VMI, and 3.3% rotation were significant predictors of MHT scores


Weil, M.J., & Cunningham Amundson, S.J. (1994) Relationship between visuomotor and handwriting skills of children in kindergarten. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 48, 982-988.



Daly, Christopher J., &Kelley, Gail T., &Krauss, Andrea (2003). Relationship between visual-motor integration and handwriting skills of children in kindergarten: A modified replication study American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 57,(459-462)

Look at VM


Lined vs unlined paper


Results- students who could copy the 1st 9 of VMI had significantly better than those who could not. No significant difference in letter writing legibility between lined and unlined paper. VMI is strongly related to the development of HW.


Dennis, Julie L., & Swinth, Yvonne (2001). Pencil grasp and children's handwriting legibility during different length writing tasks American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 55, (175-183)

No significant difference across grasp - type of grasp did not affect legibility
46 4th grade students


Zivani, J., & Elkins, J. (1986) Effects of pencil grip on handwriting speed and legibility. Education Review, 38, (247-257)

  • Found that grasp patterns may not significantly affect overall handwriting performance.

Sassoon, Nimmo-Smith & Wing (1986)

  • 294 Participants 7-16 years old
  • Grasp vs writing speed - no relationship


Elliott J. M., & Connolly K. J. (1984). A classification of manipulative hand movements Developmental Medical Child Neurology, 26, (283-296)

Simple synergies - all movements of digits (including thumb) are convergent flexor synergies/squeezing rubber ball

 

Reciprocal synergies -

  • Combinations of movements where thumb and other digits show dissimilar or reciprocal movements, such as flexion of fingers with adduction or extension of thumb.
  • -A high proportion of intrinsic movements fall into this category.

Burton, A., & Dancisak, M. (2000). Grip form and graphomotor control in preschool children. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 54, (9-17)

60 subjects, age 3, 4, and 5

  • 20 trials of precision drawing task
  • 4 trials with 5 implements of varying diameters

Increase diameter, decrease grip maturity (but did not effect accuracy)


Encourage children with poor graphomotor skills to use smaller movements which may elicit increased level grips

 

Ziviani & Elkins (1984) Hand function in the child

  • 8 and 14 year olds - the way they've held the pencil had no affect on speed or legibility


Sassoon et al. (1986) Graphonomics: Contemporary research in homework

  • No advantage of writing speed with a tripod grasp compared with other grips


Pencil Diameter

  • 3 studies found no impact on accuracy; drawing, writing performance by a change in diameter - but diameter range was limited in these studies.
Admunson & Weil (1996)
  • by the beginning of 2nd grade, change in a child's grasp pattern may be so stressful that effort should be abandoned."