Child Development
Conditions
Brief summary
Early evaluation of prewriting skills is important, as prewriting skills set the stage for later learning of the fine motor and visual motor skills needed for writing. Evaluation of prewriting skills allows for the identification of those children who struggle with these tasks so that early intervention might address these foundational skills before academic demands become more challenging. However, current prewriting skill assessments are limited to pencil-and-paper assessments that require an evaluator to score the drawn shapes. Manual scoring is time consuming, can be subjective, and limit the ability to capture subtle changes in performance. We have developed an assessment on a tablet to assess prewriting skills in children. The preliminary testing of the assessment is published in a paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35417278/). We are now working on developing an online version of the assessment that will allow offsite data collection and will automate the analysis on the website so that the results can be automatically generated for the clinician or educator who wants to use this with the children they work with.
Interventions
OTHERAssessing prewriting skills in children
In this study, your child will be asked to do the following things: 1. Play a drawing game on a tablet 2. Copy shapes using a pencil in a paper booklet 3. Write some letters and cut paper with scissors You will complete surveys and answer questions about your child's development
Sponsors
Virginia Commonwealth University
Study design
Observational model
COHORT
Time perspective
PROSPECTIVE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
3 Years to 7 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* Children between 3 to 7 years old
Exclusion criteria
* Children unable to follow directions to attempt copying shapes.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Online QAPS | 5-10 minutes | Children will be asked to draw shapes on a touch-screen tablet, where the top half of the screen will show the shapes that they needed to draw, and the bottom of half of the screen will show a space for them to copy the shape. There are 10 shapes for the children to copy. This assessment takes 5-10 minutes to complete. |
| Beery VMI | 5-10 minutes | This is a pencil-paper visual motor assessment where children are asked to copy the shapes of increasing difficulty. There are 24 shapes in this assessment and the assessment is continued until the child cannot copy 3 consecutive shapes. This assessment takes 5-10 minutes to complete. |
| Functional hand tasks | 5-10 minutes | We will have the children demonstrate their handwriting and scissors skills. The tasks that the children as asked to complete is listed in the attached documents. This assessment takes 5-10 minutes to complete. |
| Demographics survey | 5 minutes | This is a 12 question survey that ask about the child's age, grade level, sex, race, caregiver education level, household income, state of residency, etc. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete. |
| Emotionality Assessment | 5 minutes | This is a 5 question survey that asks the caregiver to rate the child's ability to regulate emotions. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete. |
| Strengths & difficulties Questionnaire Inattention/Hyperactivity subscale | 5 minutes | This is a 5 question survey that asks the caregiver to rate the child's attentional behavior. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete. |
| Ego Resiliency Scale | 5 minutes | This is a 11 question survey that asks the caregiver to rate the child's ability to adapt to change. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete. |
Countries
United States
Contacts
CONTACTVirginia Chu, PhD, OTR/L
PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATORVirginia Chu, PhD, OTR/L
Virginia Commonwealth University
Outcome results
None listed