Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Experimental Child

Psychology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jecp

The effect of fine and grapho-motor skill demands

on preschoolers’ decoding skill
Sebastian Suggate ⇑, Eva Pufke, Heidrun Stoeger
University of Regensburg, Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Previous correlational research has found indications that fine
Received 13 January 2015 motor skills (FMS) link to early reading development, but the work
Revised 17 July 2015 has not demonstrated causality. We manipulated 51 preschoolers’
FMS while children learned to decode letters and nonsense words
in a within-participants, randomized, and counterbalanced
Keywords:
single-factor design with pre- and posttesting. In two conditions,
Fine motor skills
Decoding
children wrote with a pencil that had a conical shape fitted to
Early reading the end filled with either steel (impaired writing condition) or
Emergent literacy polystyrene (normal writing condition). In a third control condi-
Grapho-motor skills tion, children simply pointed at the letters with the light pencil
Writing as they learned to read the words (pointing condition). Results
indicate that children learned the most decoding skills in the nor-
mal writing condition, followed by the pointing and impaired writ-
ing conditions. In addition, working memory, phonemic awareness,
and grapho-motor skills were generally predictors of decoding skill
development. The findings provide experimental evidence that
having lower FMS is disadvantageous for reading development.
Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Introduction

Several empirical studies highlight the intriguing role that fine motor skills (FMS) play not just in
cognitive and mathematical development (Grissmer, Grimm, Aiyer, Murrah, & Steele, 2010; Luo, Jose,
Huntsinger, & Pigott, 2007; Pagani, Fitzpatrick, Archambault, & Janosz, 2010) but also surprisingly in

⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Suggate).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.07.012
0022-0965/Ó 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48 35

aspects of reading and emergent literacy development (Brookman, McDonald, McDonald, & Bishop,
2013; Cameron et al., 2012; Grissmer et al., 2010). Theories as to why FMS and early cognitive and aca-
demic variables are connected are unfortunately sparse (Suggate & Stoeger, 2014). Moreover, due to
the correlational nature of research into FMS and reading skills, causal inference has been difficult.
Therefore, in the current study, children’s FMS were experimentally manipulated during an early read-
ing learning task to examine the effect that FMS have on decoding skill development.

FMS, grapho-motor skills, and writing

FMS are defined as ‘‘small muscle movements requiring close eye–hand coordination’’ (Luo et al.,
2007, p. 596). Grapho-motor skills comprise a subset of FMS referring to the manual operation of a
pencil or pen, typically during writing or drawing. Often, grapho-motor skills are used interchangeably
with handwriting skill (Ratzon, Efraim, & Bart, 2007) and in some research paradigms interchangeably
with FMS (Bart, Hajami, & Bar-Haim, 2007). Writing, in turn, involves the cognitive knowledge of let-
ters and words in addition to grapho-motor skills such that high-level writing is the ability to produce
letters and words with correct form and in a fluent manner. In the current work, an attempt was made
to respect these differences among FMS, grapho-motor, and writing skills by using these terms pre-
cisely; nonetheless, when FMS are turned to the task of reading and writing, these inevitably become
more precisely conceptualized as grapho-motor skills.
In longitudinal work, it may be especially important to distinguish clearly between FMS and writ-
ing skills when investigating reading and emergent literacy development because children who have
acquired FMS may well have achieved this via engaging in writing activities (Cornhill & Case-Smith,
1996; Stachelhaus & Strauß, 2005). Therefore, there is a danger of multicausality in that through writ-
ing activities both FMS and grapho-motor activities alongside the cognitive knowledge of letters and
words would all be improved, thereby leading to spurious links between these domains. Accordingly,
when FMS measures require grapho-motor or writing skills (e.g., Grissmer et al., 2010; Son & Meisels,
2006), there is danger that FMS and the cognitive knowledge of letters and words are confounded in
previous correlational research. However, in experimental work, the difference among FMS,
grapho-motor skills, and to some extent writing becomes more trivial because experimental control
can be taken over both previous cognitive knowledge of reading and children’s FMS.

Early reading and decoding skills

Emergent literacy skills are those that precede and play a role in reading development (Lonigan,
Schatschneider, Westberg, & National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Emergent literacy skills that are
important precursors of word reading include letter knowledge (saying ‘‘bee’’ for the letter ‘‘b’’),
knowledge of letter–sound correspondences (saying ‘‘buh’’ for ‘‘b’’), phonemic awareness (can say that
the word ‘‘cat’’ has the sounds /k/ /a/ /t/), fluency with the code (reading words quickly), and hand-
writing (Dickinson, McCabe, Anastasopoulos, Peisner-Feinberg, & Poe, 2003; Whitehurst & Lonigan,
1998, 2001). Decoding skills are those that enable the reader to turn the symbols of text (i.e., gra-
phemes) into sounds (i.e., phonemes). Research studies and syntheses consistently find that these
emergent literacy skills predict reading development in the early grades (Lonigan et al., 2008). Given
the focus on preschoolers1 and reading development, for the purposes of the study, we narrowed emer-
gent literacy skills further down to decoding skills because these are particularly necessary for decipher-
ing words.

FMS and decoding skill development

FMS, emergent literacy, and decoding skills typically undergo development during the preschool
period. Accordingly, in the first instance, it is important to ensure that links between FMS and reading

1
In Germany, children are generally in play-based kindergartens without formal reading instruction until the academic year in
which they turn 7 years old. However, here we adopt the closest international term for this group of children and call them
preschoolers.
36 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48

are not simply accounted for by maturation. The need to account for maturation is further stressed by
neurological theories, whereby certain neural regions may be implicated in both FMS and reading
development (James & Gauthier, 2006). However, investigations indicate that links between FMS
and early reading exist above and beyond chronological age (Cameron et al., 2012; Grissmer et al.,
2010), which is a proxy for maturation (Rutter, 1989).
A second hypothesis as to why FMS and decoding skills should relate to one another arises from
commonalities in environmental preschool experiences. Specifically, it may reasonably be assumed
that children whose preschool and home environments foster early reading development also encour-
age early writing development. Although it is by no means a given that children who are taught to
decode are also taught other literacy skills (Justice, Kaderavek, Fan, Sofka, & Hunt, 2009), Sénéchal,
LeFevre, Thomas, and Daley (1998) found that parents of kindergarteners who reported teaching their
children to read words were more likely to also teach them to print words (r = .62). Through writing,
children’s knowledge of both letters and their FMS would likely be developed because of the fine
motor control required for pencil operation during writing. Although this criticism applies more to
correlational work than to experimental work, greater control is required of factors such as the home
literacy environment (Morrison, Griffith, & Alberts, 1997) or related factors such as vocabulary and
socioeconomic status (Biemiller & Slonim, 2001).
A third explanation for why FMS might relate to decoding skills arises from embodied cognition
theories (Barsalou, 2008; Glenberg & Gallese, 2012). According to these theories, cognitions are cou-
pled with motor actions such that these can either facilitate or interfere with each other. In terms of
interference, Boudreau and Bushnell (2000) found that motor actions and goal-directed actions can
mutually interfere with one another in 10-month-old infants. In adults semantically discordant motor
actions slow lexical processing (Zwaan & Taylor, 2006).
Conversely, coupling motor actions with cognitive content appears to facilitate learning (von
Soden-Fraunhofen, Sim, Liebich, Frank, & Kiefer, 2007). For example, object manipulation facilitates
mental processing in adults (Wohlschläger, 1988). For advanced reading skill typically found in chil-
dren older than those considered in the current study, motor actions appear to improve reading com-
prehension (Glenberg, Brown, & Levin, 2007; Glenberg, Goldberg, & Zhu, 2011; Glenberg, Gutierrez,
Levin, Japuntich, & Kaschak, 2004).
A question of significance to the current study is whether engaging in the action of writing words
and letters facilitates learning of those very letters. Indeed, during visual letter processing, brain
regions are activated that are also involved in writing (James & Gauthier, 2006; Longcamp, Anton,
Roth, & Velay, 2005). Findings from behavioral studies show that spelling acquisition is greater when
accompanied by writing activities as opposed to reading alone (Bosse, Chaves, & Valdois, 2014;
Ouellette & Beers, 2010; Shahar-Yames & Share, 2008) and that word reading skills can be improved
through the practice of writing (Conrad, 2008; Ouellette & Sénéchal, 2008). Presumably, children with
lower FMS might have greater difficulty in forming letters, which could, in light of increased cognitive
load (e.g., Sweller, van Merrienboer, & Paas, 1998), reduce capacity resources available for the higher
order cognitive activities required for letter processing. This impoverished experience may then affect
the extent to which the cognitions have been embodied and, hence, learned. Conversely, the autom-
atization of FMS and grapho-motor skills might release capacity resources, thereby facilitating acqui-
sition of decoding skill.
Three studies have found evidence for links between early reading skills and FMS over and above
the influence of cognitive and confounding factors—even if the links do weaken once such variables
are taken into account. In one study, analyzing data from three large longitudinal datasets,
Grissmer and Colleagues (2010) found evidence that FMS linked to later reading skill in Grade 5 over
and above controls for cognitive, gross motor skills, socioeconomic indicators, behavioral and social
skills, general knowledge, and attention skills. Although it is impressive that FMS link to reading skills
in Grade 5 above and beyond the host of predictors, the longtime frame between kindergarten and
Grade 5 makes it difficult to determine both whether and how FMS link to decoding skill in kinder-
garten. Furthermore, it is also difficult to form precise hypotheses about how FMS and reading might
relate to each other because both of these constructs were measured in different ways in each of the
cohorts; it does not appear to be the case that the kindergarten measures of reading included a
 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48 37

systematic test of decoding skill and instead appeared to be centered around phoneme awareness, let-
ter recognition, and vocabulary.
In the second study, conducted with a sample of 9- and 10-year-old language- and/or
reading-impaired children, Brookman and Colleagues (2013) found links between FMS and reading
and language skill. A strength of their study was that they looked in a highly differential way at
FMS, finding—consistent with theories of embodied cognition—that pure tapping speed did not relate
strongly to reading, but FMS involving more complex movements did. However, this study was again
conducted on older samples, preventing inferences about how FMS and reading become intertwined.
Second, the samples also represent children with reading or language impairments, and previous
research has found that for samples with dyslexia compared with those without, links between
FMS and reading may differ (Viholainen et al., 2011).
In the third study, Cameron and Colleagues (2012) examined the contribution that FMS and exec-
utive functioning made to U.S. kindergarteners’ (N = 213) emergent literacy skills and reading achieve-
ment. In general, once demographic factors and executive functioning were taken into account, only
one FMS task in which children needed to copy a design significantly related to children’s decoding
skill. Due to the demands of pencil operation, this design–copy task could perhaps be better concep-
tualized as measuring grapho-motor skills. Finally, the correlational nature of the study leaves ques-
tions as to the causal link among FMS, grapho-motor skills, and decoding development.

The current study

To date, exclusively correlational research has examined the contribution of FMS to decoding skill
development, and this evidence is not conclusive as to whether FMS play a role in decoding skill devel-
opment. Existing evidence generally suggests links between FMS and decoding skills above and
beyond controls for cognitive development and chronological age, making it unlikely that purely mat-
urational factors account for the relations. However, we note the small number of studies conducted
with children during the preschool period and looking at early reading (i.e., Cameron et al., 2012, but
to later reading also Grissmer et al., 2010; Pagani et al., 2010). Most crucially, to show that FMS exert a
causal influence on early reading development, experimental work conducive to causal inference
needs to be carried out.
At a practical level, experimental work into the effect that FMS have on reading is hampered by the
difficulty in manipulating the key variable of interest, namely children’s FMS. However, a
quasi-experimental approach, whereby children would be divided into groups based on their levels
of FMS, is problematic primarily because children who have FMS difficulties (or advantages) often
exhibit other cognitive differences as well (Michel, Roethlisberger, Neuenschwander, & Roebers,
2011). Accordingly, we devised an experimental paradigm in which we manipulated children’s FMS
as the children were taught to decode nonsense words in three different conditions, namely normal
writing, impaired writing, and pointing conditions (i.e., pointing requires comparatively minimal
motor demands). For these conditions, we developed two different pencils (see Fig. 1), each with a
conical form on the end but differing vastly in their respective masses. In one condition the cone con-
tained a 360-g steel weight (impaired writing condition), and in another condition the cone was made
of polystyrene and weighed 30 g (normal writing condition). Finally, the remaining condition con-
tained the same stimuli except that the children pointed at the letters and words instead of copying
them (pointing condition). Importantly, the children used the lighter pencil while pointing at the
words to control for novelty effects. Therefore, we could investigate the question of whether the
increased motor demands during the impaired writing condition resulted in lower decoding skills
development in comparison with both a normal writing control and a group where minimal motor
involvement was required (pointing condition). Importantly, because the kinds of FMS that were
manipulated were those involved in the task of writing and pencil operation, the experimental manip-
ulation can be thought of as targeting FMS in the form of grapho-motor skills.
Crucially, all children took part in all three conditions, with unique letters, sounds, and words being
taught in each condition so that we could determine the effects that each experimental manipulation
had on decoding development at posttest. The condition order was counterbalanced and randomized,
to account for practice and experimental stimulus effects. In the two writing conditions, children
38 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48

Fig. 1. Pencils used in the impaired writing (top) and normal writing (bottom) conditions.

copied letters and words that they were being taught to read, thereby retaining a strong link to phon-
ics reading instruction and to a reading-through-writing approach (Bayerisches Staatsministerium für
Unterricht und Kultus [StMuK], 2000), which the children would shortly encounter after school entry.
We hypothesized that the increased motor demands of the impaired writing condition would
result in lower decoding skill development, presumably representing the kinds of experiences and
subsequent learning difficulties of children entering school with lower FMS experience. We reasoned
that the normal writing condition would result in greater decoding skills acquisition than the pointing
condition because of the inherent link between letter and motor processing that appears to consoli-
date learning (James & Gauthier, 2006), consistent with theories of embodied cognition (Glenberg &
Gallese, 2012; Glenberg et al., 2007; Wilson, 2002).
In addition to directly manipulating children’s grapho-motor skills, we investigated the role of
important predictors of reading development identified in previous research such as working memory,
attention, and phonemic awareness (Conners, 2009; Kirby, Parrila, & Pfeiffer, 2003; Lonigan et al.,
2008; Schatschneider, Francis, Foorman, & Fletcher, 1999). Here, too, we hypothesized that these vari-
ables would predict reading development in the three conditions primarily because (a) phonemic
awareness should provide a better foundation to acquire the targeted reading skills (Ehri, Nunes,
Willows, & Schuster, 2001; Suggate, 2010), (b) working memory should facilitate short-term storage
of the explained grapheme–phoneme links as the children progress through the conditions, and (c)
having greater attention skills should allow children to better cope with the novel demands of the
experimental conditions. Importantly, the key predictors of letter naming and decoding skill were
experimentally controlled at pretest by virtue of the decoding test (Lonigan et al., 2008). Furthermore,
we included measures of FMS (including grapho-motor skills) to test whether having greater levels of
FMS improved learning from the normal writing and impaired writing conditions (Motor
Skill  Experimental Condition interaction).

Method

Participants

The participants for this study were 51 children in the final months of preschool. Data were col-
lected in preschools shortly before entering Grade 1 in a small city (population  150,000) in Ger-
many. Unlike in the United States, in Germany it is uncommon for children in preschool to be
taught reading skills, with these environments instead consisting largely of structured and unstruc-
tured play activities. There were 22 girls (43.10%), and the mean age of the sample was 6.23 years
(SD = 0.37). Only 11.75% of the parents had obtained a university degree, and 20.55% of the parents
 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48 39

and 2.00% of the children were born in another country, with 19.60% of families speaking another lan-
guage at home in addition to German. Compared with census data, the sample could be considered
less well educated, but the sample was nonetheless approximately representative of the German pop-
ulation with regard to parental country of birth and second languages spoken at home. Of the total
number of attendees at the preschools, approximately 62% of parents returned signed parental con-
sent forms and accompanying questionnaires.

Measures

Experimental stimuli
Three sets of distinct stimuli were developed that could be counterbalanced across the experimen-
tal conditions (such that one set appeared an equal number of times in each condition). The stimuli
comprised three sets of 3 target letters and three sets of 4 nonsense words to be learned, giving 9 let-
ters and 12 words in total. Each set contained 3 letters (Set 1: u, d, and l; Set 2: a, b, and f; Set 3: o, p,
and t) that were combined to form the following words (Set 1: ud, dul, uld, and udlu; Set 2: ba, abf, fab,
and faba; Set 3: ot, top, opt, and opto). The vowels e and i were avoided because of their occurring
frequently in German, and the vowel y was excluded because of its very infrequent occurrence in
German. The selection of consonants was determined according to the frequency with which they
occur in written language and also by the similarity in form they exhibit. As a rule, frequently occur-
ring consonants were avoided and the consonants b, p, and d were deliberately selected because of
their similarity to one another (reflecting 180° rotation and/or reflection of each other). Likewise, f,
t, and l were selected because of their alikeness in typed block letter form. The similarity of the letters
should increase task difficulty such that the children require greater skill at discriminating between
the letters. Because children in preschool in Germany do not learn to read and typically show floor
effects on early decoding tests (Suggate, Reese, Lenhard, & Schneider, 2014), we expected the above
stimuli to be challenging for the children, thereby avoiding ceiling effects.

Decoding skill
Unlike the control variables, which were administered only at one point in time, we conducted a
test of children’s decoding skill for the experimental stimuli at both pre- and posttest. The decoding
test comprised three subtests pertaining to each of the distinct stimuli instructed in each of the exper-
imental stimulus sets (that were randomly assigned to each experimental condition over the course of
the experiment). Children were presented with all 9 letters and all 12 words (i.e., 3 letters and 4 pseu-
dowords composed of between 2 and 4 letters per condition) comprising the target stimuli used in all
of the experimental conditions. The letters were presented individually, one at a time, and children
were asked to read the letters out loud. Children were awarded 1 point for each correct letter naming
or correct letter sound because in Germany children typically do not learn letter names until they are
in school. We decided to allow both correct naming and letter sounds because the experimental con-
dition involved instructing both. Children were then asked to read the experimental stimuli (i.e., the
instructed nonsense words) out loud. If they correctly decoded two letters by blending them together,
they received 1 point, and 1 further point was added for each additional letter decoded from the same
word. In total, there were 20 possible points awarded for each of the three sets. Specifically, 12 points
were awarded for sounding or naming each of the letters in the words (one 2-letter word, two 3-letter
words, and one 4-letter word), and a further 8 points were awarded for each successful blend of 2 let-
ters during sounding out or reading the words (i.e., a 2-letter word provides one possible blend, a
3-letter word provides two possible blends, and a 4-letter word provides three possible blends, giving
8 points).

Fine motor skills

To measure children’s FMS, the published standardized German version of the Movement Assess-
ment Battery for Children was used (Petermann, Bös, & Kastner, 2011). Children completed three
tasks, namely posting coins into a slot, threading beads, and tracing through a maze by drawing in
between two parallel lines. There were two trials each for the coin-posting task for both the dominant
and nondominant hands. Aggregate scores were calculated according to the test manual norms
40 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48

(i.e., M = 10, SD = 3). The test manual reports cross-cultural comparability of the norms among the
United States, Norway, Sweden, and Germany; good test–retest reliability (intraclass correlation
[ICC] = .92–.93, but .65 for maze tracing), excellent interrater reliability (kappa = .94–1.00), and
adequate internal consistency (acr = .58) across all three tasks.

Grapho-motor skills
To assess children’s grapho-motor skills, a Greek letter copying task was used (Stoeger, Ziegler, &
Martzog, 2008), which we adapted in the following way. Children were first asked to copy three
symbols (using a normal pencil) in an untimed task, and then 23 further letters were presented and
children had a 1-min time limit to copy as many letters as possible. These letters were then scored
using a qualitative judgment of form and vertical orientation, as has been used in the evaluation of
handwriting (see Molfese et al., 2011). Up to 8 points were awarded for form and 3 points for vertical
orientation, giving a maximum possible score of 11 points. Interrater reliability from a second scoring
of half of the data was estimated as ac = .89 for form and ac = .80 for orientation.

Phonemic awareness
Phonemic awareness was assessed using two subtests from the Bielefelder Screening (Jansen,
Mannhaupt, Marx, & Skowronek, 2002), a widely used preschool test of phonemic awareness. The
two tests required children to (a) construct words from two orally presented phonemes and (b) iden-
tify whether a given phoneme was present in a subsequently presented word. Each test comprised 10
items, and a composite score of phonemic awareness was calculated with a maximum possible score
of 20 points. Internal consistency was estimated at acr = .69 and .73 for the first and second tasks,
respectively, and internal consistency across both tasks was estimated at acr = .77. Scores were
combined into a general phonemic awareness composite.

Attention
The Kaseler Concentration Test for 3- to 8-year-olds (Krampen, 2007) was used. In this test,
children place a line through target items (e.g., bells) selected from rows of 25 pictures. The maximum
possible score was 36 from the nine total rows. Because the test responses almost always consist of
correct responses until the time limit is reached, calculating internal consistency did not seem
meaningful; thus, we note that manual test–retest coefficients were in the vicinity of .90.

Working memory
Working memory was assessed using the forward digit span subtest of the published standardized
German version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC; Petermann & Petermann,
2010). Digit span forward requires children to repeat numbers in the same order as the examiner reads
aloud. Children were awarded 1 point for each correct repetition. The internal consistency was esti-
mated at acr = .77.

Demographics questionnaire
A parent questionnaire was distributed that contained questions about ethnicity, language spoken
at home, country of birth, and educational achievement at secondary and tertiary levels.

Procedure

Experimental design
The experimental design was 3  2 within participants. The first factor was the FMS difficulty level
and contained three grapho-motor conditions (impaired writing, normal writing, and pointing). The
second factor was time and incorporated a pre- and post-measurement on the dependent variable
of decoding skill. Further predictor variables (i.e., phonemic awareness, attention, working memory,
and grapho-motor skills) were statistically controlled in the analysis. The design was fully counterbal-
anced across participants such that the same three sets of stimuli and the order of the experimental
conditions were randomized and systematically varied across participants. Thus, all participants took
part in all conditions but in different orders, and the experimental stimuli used in each condition
 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48 41

varied across participants (for a similar method, see Rosenthal & Ehri, 2008). In total, there were six
condition orders (e.g., Sets 1, 2, and 3; Sets 1, 3, and 2; Sets 2, 1, and 3) across three experimental con-
ditions (pointing, normal writing, and impaired writing), meaning that each counterbalancing was
complete every 18 participants (i.e., 3  6 = 18).

Experimental procedure
Letters inviting children to participate in the experiment were sent to the parents of children of
participating preschools. All tests in the experimental phase were conducted by a doctoral student
according to the instructions in the test manuals. University ethics procedures were adhered to in con-
ducting this work.
The experimental procedure is depicted in Table 1. Briefly, in the first session, a pretest was con-
ducted on the main dependent variable (i.e., decoding skills for the experimental stimuli) to ensure
the extent to which children could already read the target stimuli. Next, children first experienced
only one of the experimental conditions with its own unique experimental stimuli, depending on
the randomized counterbalancing. Following this, they participated in the two other conditions, each
again with its own unique stimuli (see numbers 3, 5, and 7 in the first column of Table 1). After each of
the experimental conditions, one of the control variables was administered to vary the tasks and help
maintain children’s attention. At the end of this first 30-min session, children’s acquisition of the
decoding skills to posttest from all of the stimuli sets was tested.
The control variables (see Table 1) of FMS and grapho-motor skills were tested in a second session
7 days later to eliminate any potential influence that conducting these tasks prior to the experimental
conditions might have had on children’s performance in these conditions (either facilitative or inter-
fering). These control tests were conducted by another experimenter who was blind to the children’s
performance in the previous session. In addition to counterbalancing the experimental conditions and
stimuli to be learned in each session, we also counterbalanced when phonemic awareness and work-
ing memory were administered to reduce the possibility that participating in these tasks optimized or
interfered with children’s learning in the experimental conditions because both skills play a role in
early decoding (Lonigan et al., 2008).

Experimental conditions
Instructions were standardized across all conditions such that the instruction time in each
condition was 1.5 min. In each condition, we also recorded the time (in seconds) that children took

Table 1
Experimental procedure.

Sequence Task Variable description Approximate

duration (min)
1 Pretests Decoding skills (all three stimuli sets)a 1
2 Control variable Either phonemic awareness or working memory 3
3 Experimental Either pointing, normal writing, or impaired writing condition 2
condition (e.g., Stimuli Set 3)b
4 Control variable Attention 3
5 Experimental Either pointing, normal writing, or impaired writing condition 2
condition (e.g., Stimuli Set 1)b
6 Control variable Vocabulary 2
7 Experimental Either pointing, normal writing, or impaired writing condition 2
condition (e.g., Stimuli Set 2)b
8 Control variable Either phonemic awareness or working memory 3
9 Posttests Decoding skills (all three stimuli sets)a 2
11 Control variable Fine motor skills 6
12 Control variable Grapho-motor skills 2

Note. To avoid overloading the children, Phases 11 and 12 were conducted 1 week after the first session.
a
All three stimuli sets were tested.
b
Only one stimuli set was learned in each condition.
42 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48

to complete their tasks (either copying or pointing), beginning from the time of the instructions in the
experimental conditions to the last response in that condition.
At the beginning of each experimental condition, the experimenter told the children that they were
going to learn nonsense words and that they should pay careful attention. The nonsense words were
presented one after the other. The experimenter first read each word aloud, then sounded out each
phoneme in the word, and subsequently read the entire word together. Children were then prompted
to reproduce the word via one of the three conditions, either by pointing at the letters, writing them
with the normal pencil, or writing them with the weighted pencil. If the children had difficulty in
sounding letters or the word out loud, the experimenter repeated the stimuli once again.
In the pointing condition, the experimenter touched the corresponding part of the word with a
pencil while reading or sounding the word out. Children were then asked to repeat the reading of
the word after the experimenter and also to point at the word as they read. In the normal writing
and impaired writing conditions, the children were asked to copy the word by writing it onto a sheet
of paper. Children were given a ‘‘funny’’ pencil that contained a conical configuration at the end (see
Fig. 1). In the normal writing condition the conical configuration was constructed from polystyrene
and weighed 30 g, and in the impaired writing condition the cone was constructed from a metal
weight and weighed 360 g. Accordingly, these conditions required a number of skills typically needed
in early reading instruction in school (e.g., phonological working memory, visual skills), and the con-
ditions were as closely matched as possible, differing only in terms of grapho-motor skills and FMS
demands.
Before conducting the experiment, we conducted a pilot study with a sample of 11 kindergarteners
(Mage = 5.14 years, SD = 0.40, range = 4.58–5.83) to investigate the impairment of grapho-motor skills
attributable to the additional weight on the end of the pencil. Children performed a grapho-motor
skills test (Stoeger et al., 2008) with both the light and heavy pencils in a counterbalanced order. Chil-
dren’s writing was impaired when using the pencil with the heavy weight (M = 4.82, SD = 1.72) com-
pared with the pencil with the light weight (M = 6.45, SD = 1.44), t(10) = 3.46, p < .01.

Results

Regarding the experimental conditions (measured in seconds), children spent significantly longer
in the normal writing (M = 119.61, SD = 34.47) and impaired writing (M = 126.67, SD = 33.86) condi-
tions than in the pointing condition (M = 80.39, SD = 25.53), F(2, 150) = 31.84, p < .001, as confirmed
by post hoc LSD (least significant difference) tests. The stimulus sets were evenly distributed across
the experimental conditions, v2(4, N = 153) = 0.71, p = .95. Comparison of pretest scores suggested
that children performed higher on the decoding test for the ‘‘o, p, t’’ set, F(2, 150) = 3.94, p = .02,
whereby set ‘‘o, p, t’’ resulted in higher scores than the ‘‘a, b, f’’ set (p < .01) but not the ‘‘u, d, l’’ set
(p = .08), the latter two of which did not differ from one another (p = .30). At posttest, no main effect
for word set was found, F(2, 144) = 0.13, p = .88, and no interaction with experimental condition was
evident, F(4, 144) = 1.46, p = .22.
Next, the decoding skills at pre- and posttest for the three counterbalanced experimental condi-
tions were calculated. Three decoding scores for each experimental condition were calculated to
determine posttest decoding development as a function of the experimental manipulation. Recall that
this was possible because three distinct experimental stimulus sets, randomized and counterbalanced
among participants, were used in each experimental condition. Decoding scores as a function of exper-
imental condition are represented graphically in Fig. 2. As can be seen in this figure, the groups were
similar at pretest and the normal writing condition showed the greatest improvement to posttest. A
within-participants repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) confirmed that both the main
effects of time, F(1, 50) = 160.95, p < .001, g2 = .76, and experimental condition, F(2, 49) = 5.43,
p < .01, g2 = .18, and their interaction, F(2, 49) = 4.51, p < .05, g2 = .16, were statistically significant. Post
hoc t-tests indicated that the experimental conditions did not differ from each other at pretest (all
ps > .44) and that at posttest the normal writing condition was similar to the pointing condition,
t(50) = 1.78, p = .08, both of which were higher than the impaired writing condition, t(50) = 4.77,
p < .001 and t(50) = 2.89, p < .01, respectively.
 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48 43

Fig. 2. Early decoding performance of the targeted stimuli across the three experimental conditions as a function of time.
Because of the within-participants design, n = 51 in each condition. Error bars represent 1 standard error of the mean.

FMS, decoding skills, and the other cognitive and motor variables are presented in Table 2 along
with means, standard deviations, distribution statistics, and correlation coefficients. As can be seen
in this table, the decoding measures correlated highly with each other and also moderately with
phonemic awareness, working memory, and grapho-motor skills, but less so with FMS. Correlation
coefficients indicate that FMS and grapho-motor skills relate to each other and that attention, in turn,
relates to these along with phonemic awareness.
Next, we tested the influence of the hypothesized predictors of attention, working memory, phone-
mic awareness, FMS, and grapho-motor skills on decoding skills at posttest while controlling for the
pretest scores across the conditions. Two dummy variables were created to estimate the effects of
the three experimental conditions. Furthermore, we opted for posttest decoding skill as the outcome
variable with pretest decoding as a predictor because, unlike the gain score approach in Table 2, this
allows these factors to differ from one another—which seemed appropriate in the case of an experi-
ment designed to take control over previous experiences. The results from the analyses appear in
Table 3. Pretest decoding skill is by some distance the best predictor of posttest decoding scores,
and overall the models explain a large proportion of the variance in posttest decoding. The analyses
confirm the finding that children in the impaired writing condition performed worse on posttest
decoding even after controlling for pretest decoding and the other predictor variables. Children’s
working memory, grapho-motor skills, phonemic awareness, and attention skills were all significant
predictors of posttest decoding skill over and above pretest decoding. In a second step, interaction
terms between the experimental condition dummy variables and FMS, on the one hand, and
44 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48

Table 2
Descriptive statistics and correlation coefficients for motor and cognitive variables.

Measure Descriptives Correlations

M SD Min. Max. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1 Pretest 2.92 4.13 0 19 – .67* .76* .67* .59* .59* .08 .18 .46* .24 .36*
pointing
2 Posttest 7.33 4.83 0 19 – .71* .75* .55* .73* .09 .37* .42* .15 .24
pointing
3 Pretest normal 3.04 4.28 0 19 – .74* .54* .67* .09 .33* .37* .32* .28
4 Posttest 8.18 4.78 0 19 – .65* .76* .15 .34* .44* .20 .40*
normal
5 Pretest 2.61 3.99 0 19 – .76* .23 .30* .34* .22 .28*
impaired
6 Posttest 5.88 5.04 0 19 – .11 .49* .52* .28 .37*
impaired
7 Fine motor 11.53 3.35 5 19 – .32* – .43* .13
skills .04
*
8 Grapho-motor 7.40 1.55 3 10 – .22 .51 .21
skills
9 Working 9.22 2.80 4 17 – .07 .15
memory
10 Attention 32.43 3.45 24 36 – .39*
11 Phonemic 43.24 5.04 24 50 –
awareness

Note. N = 51.
*
p < .05.

Table 3
Regression analyses predicting decoding skills in the experimental conditions as a function of the covariates.

Predictor Decoding skills

B SE b
Intercept –2.66 2.99
Pretest decoding 0.70 0.07 .58*
Normal writing dummy 0.76 0.61 .07
Impaired writing dummy –1.23 0.61 –.12*
Fine motor skills 0.02 0.09 .01
Grapho-motor skills 0.75 0.20 .23*
Working memory 0.31 0.10 .18*
Attention –0.19 0.10 –.13*
Phonemic awareness 0.13 0.06 .13*

Note. Adjusted R2 = .61 (p < .001).

*
p < .05.

grapho-motor skills, on the other, were entered into the regression analyses. Adding FMS 
Experimental Condition did not improve the model, DR2 = .002, p < .73, nor did adding
Grapho-Motor Skills  Experimental Condition, DR2 = .005, p < .36.

Discussion

Previous research investigating the role that FMS plays in early reading development has exclu-
sively employed correlational designs (Brookman et al., 2013; Cameron et al., 2012; Grissmer et al.,
2010). As a consequence, it has been difficult to be certain that FMS are an important causal factor
in early reading development. Here, we manipulated children’s grapho-motor skills in experimental
conditions where children learned to read and sound out novel nonsense words. Consistent with
the idea that grapho-motor skills are important for learning how to read, children in the impaired
 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48 45

writing condition showed less decoding skill development than children in the normal writing or
pointing condition.
Accordingly, the findings provide the first causal evidence that children whose grapho-motor skills
are impaired during reading instruction will learn to decode at a slower rate. Therefore, direct support
is provided for the idea that grapho-motor skills—and hence FMS—constitute an important school
readiness variable (Grissmer et al., 2010; Morrison & Hindman, 2012). In this sense, the data are con-
sistent with previous research findings that FMS explain a degree of the variance in reading develop-
ment (Brookman et al., 2013; Griffin, Hemphill, Camp, & Wolf, 2004; Grissmer et al., 2010). Adding
further support to this evidence, having good grapho-motor skills resulted in better posttest decoding
skills over and above attention, working memory, phonemic awareness, and pretest decoding skill;
however, this link was not observed for FMS.
Presumably, children with greater working memory can better store and process the taught letter–
sound and sound–word associations in the experimental conditions during the learning phase, in turn
leading to greater learning. In a similar manner, children with greater phonemic awareness might
experience less difficulty in recognizing the letter sounds. Furthermore, attention correlated with
FMS, grapho-motor skills, and phonemic awareness.
Interestingly, the normal writing condition appeared to result in an advantage in word reading skill
over the pointing condition, not just over the impaired writing condition. This finding might be taken
as empirical support either for reading-through-writing approaches (Reichen, 2008) or for the notion
that embodying reading skills leads to greater learning, as has been found in embodied cognition
research (Glenberg et al., 2007, 2011). On the one hand, one factor mitigating against drawing this
conclusion arises due to the difference in the durations of the learning conditions, whereby children
spent the least amount of time decoding the target stimuli in the pointing condition. Perhaps chil-
dren’s learning would have been greater had children spent more time in the decoding condition.
On the other hand, it may be precisely the additional effort required to write the letters that leads
to greater learning—as suggested by studies comparing learning from note taking via hand or com-
puter (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014). Given broad group mean differences in duration spent in the
experimental conditions, it was not possible to statistically adjust these means by condition duration;
instead, this variable should be manipulated in future research.
One limitation of the current experiment refers to uncertainty about the experimentally manipu-
lated motor conditions. Specifically, although we can be sure that fewer decoding skills were acquired
in the impaired writing condition, we cannot definitively conclude that differences in FMS or
grapho-motor skills per se caused this. By definition, it is difficult to downwardly manipulate a skill
without introducing interference (e.g., via forgetting, disturbance such as background noise, or a gen-
eral impairment as could be induced through a drug), and in such studies uncertainty will remain as to
exactly what the causal ingredient and pathway were.
In conceiving the experimental paradigm, we weighed various options to manipulate FMS, such as
creating interference through a simultaneous motor task, and piloted other methods such as wearing
gloves to increase motor demands. Our adopted method of using pencils with attached counter-
weights served the advantage of indeed impairing motor performance; however, doing so also con-
founded the closely related constructs of grapho-motor skills and FMS with each other.
Furthermore, it introduced an artificial constraint on motor skills that may be different from that
experienced by children with lower motor skills generally. Accordingly, we urge circumspection
and further research with regard to whether FMS in addition to grapho-motor skills are causal in
decoding development. Presumably, grapho-motor skills mediate the link between FMS and decoding
skill development; however, to our knowledge, no published study has tested this. Conversely, it is
encouraging to consider the consistency between the current findings and those investigating FMS
and reading in previous research (e.g., Cameron et al., 2012). Moreover, effects arising due to distrac-
tion were controlled by using two pencils, with only one containing a heavy counterweight.
It is possible that learning in one of the first experimental conditions stimulated acquisition of
decoding skills in the subsequent sets and vice versa; that is, the subsequent decoding practice in later
experimental conditions consolidated learning from the earlier conditions. Such a scenario might be
expected to pose a threat to the obtained estimates of decoding skill acquisition by biasing them
upward, which would operate in an equalizing manner on the results due to the counterbalanced
46 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48

design (i.e., differences between the conditions should become smaller). However, regardless of
whether this transfer of learning across conditions occurred, the impaired writing condition still
resulted in the least gains in decoding skills, supporting the idea that the experimental conditions
did have differential effects. A suggestion for future work would be to include the pre- and posttests
directly before and after each experimental condition to better account for any transfer effects.
Interestingly, the FMS covariate was not a significant predictor of reading development from the
experimental conditions, yet the experimental manipulation resulted in an experimental effect on
reading skill. In contrast to FMS, grapho-motor skills were a significant predictor of reading develop-
ment, consistent with research indicating that FMS more proximal to writing and reading relate more
strongly to reading development (Cameron et al., 2012; Grissmer et al., 2010; Pagani et al., 2010).
Accordingly, one explanation for this finding is that grapho-motor skills and reading are more tightly
linked than FMS and reading. Indeed, results indicated that grapho-motor skills were linked to pre-
and posttest decoding skills. One possibility for future research would be to replace the Latin alphabet
with the Greek alphabet for the experimental stimuli as an alternative control for prior knowledge of
letters.
We interpret our findings as being consistent with grapho-motor skills operating in a 2-fold man-
ner on decoding skill development. In the first pathway, having greater FMS or grapho-motor skills
appeared to enable children to improve their decoding skills more to posttest when reading is learned
through writing. This proposed mechanism may explain why children with low FMS are disadvan-
taged; presumably, they are cognitively more taxed and, as a result, have fewer resources available
to internalize the instructed reading skills. The current experimental paradigm could be expanded
to test this contingency by providing target stimuli, such as a diode that periodically flashes during
the instruction, and testing whether the stimuli were noticed during the experimental conditions (test
of attention) or how many times it flashed in total (tax on working memory). In the United States, chil-
dren of the age used in the current study would have already had nigh on 1 year of reading instruction.
An interesting replication of the current study would be to conduct this experiment on younger chil-
dren before they enter kindergarten.
In the second pathway, evidence was found that supports embodied cognition accounts, whereby
embodying cognitions in action facilitates learning also for reading (Glenberg et al., 2007, 2011).
Specifically, the act of writing the letters and nonwords in the normal motor demands condition, as
opposed to just pointing at the letters, seemed to result in greater learning. However, it would appear
that this embodiment of letters cannot be too taxing; otherwise, learning may suffer as it did in the
impaired writing condition. To test this contingency further, the amount of time practicing decoding
the experimental stimuli needs to be more closely matched between the pointing condition and the
normal writing condition. Furthermore, research is needed to test whether the induced
grapho-motor skills impairments reflect actual impairments of FMS.
The practical implications of this study need to be tempered with the experimental nature of this
work; although the instruction employed in our experimental conditions used effective methods of
reading instruction (Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1999; Ehri, Nunes, Stahl, & Willows, 2001; Suggate,
2010, 2014), this was of a very short duration (i.e., 1.5 min per condition plus time taken to either copy
or point at the letters and words). Accordingly, future work might use a between-participants design
to allow increasing the number of experimental sessions. This being said, our work has several impor-
tant implications for practice as well as for future research.
Despite our support for the idea that children with lower FMS are likely disadvantaged during read-
ing and writing tasks, the current findings do not lend themselves to the conclusion that reading
instruction should avoid FMS, that is, avoid writing tasks until these are more mature for children.
The primary reason is that the normal writing condition resulted in greater learning than the pointing
condition. Indeed, the twin paradox of the current findings is that engaging the motor system appears
to facilitate learning (von Soden-Fraunhofen et al., 2007); however, when the demands on FMS are too
great, learning will be impaired.
In light of the current findings, which are—to our knowledge—the first to experimentally manipu-
late grapho-motor skills while examining their effect on learning, we were able to demonstrate that in
all likelihood FMS do play a role in reading development. Future research is needed to further explore
hypotheses and optimize instructional methods to help children who enter school with lower FMS.
 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48 47

References

Barsalou, L. W. (2008). Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 617–645.

Bart, O., Hajami, D., & Bar-Haim, Y. (2007). Predicting school adjustment from motor abilities in kindergarten. Infant and Child
Development, 16, 597–615.
Biemiller, A., & Slonim, N. (2001). Estimating root word vocabulary growth in normative and advantaged populations: Evidence
for a common sequence of vocabulary acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 498–520.
Bosse, M.-L., Chaves, N., & Valdois, S. (2014). Lexical orthography acquisition: Is handwriting better than spelling aloud?
Frontiers in Psychology, 5. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00056.
Boudreau, J. P., & Bushnell, E. W. (2000). Spilling thoughts: Configuring attentional resources in infants’ goal-directed actions.
Infant Behavior and Development, 23, 543–566.
Brookman, A., McDonald, S., McDonald, D., & Bishop, D. V. (2013). Fine motor deficits in reading disability and language
impairment: Same or different? PeerJ, 1, e217.
Bus, A. G., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (1999). Phonological awareness and early reading: A meta-analysis of experimental training
studies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 403–414.
Cameron, C. E., Brock, L. L., Murrah, W. M., Bell, L. H., Worzalla, S. L., Grissmer, D., et al (2012). Fine motor skills and executive
function both contribute to kindergarten achievement. Child Development, 83, 1229–1244.
Conners, F. A. (2009). Attentional control and the simple view of reading. Reading and Writing, 22, 591–613.
Cornhill, H., & Case-Smith, J. (1996). Factors that relate to good and poor handwriting. American Journal of Occupational Therapy,
50, 732–739.
Dickinson, D. K., McCabe, A., Anastasopoulos, L., Peisner-Feinberg, E. S., & Poe, M. D. (2003). The comprehensive language
approach to early literacy: The interrelationships among vocabulary, phonological sensitivity, and print knowledge among
preschool-aged children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 465–481.
Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Stahl, S. A., & Willows, D. M. (2001a). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read:
Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71, 393–447.
Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001b). Phonemic awareness
instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Reading Research
Quarterly, 36, 250–287.
Glenberg, A., Brown, M., & Levin, J. (2007). Enhancing comprehension in small reading groups using a manipulation strategy.
Contemporary Educational Psychology, 32, 389–399.
Glenberg, A. M., & Gallese, V. (2012). Action-based language: A theory of language acquisition, comprehension, and production.
Cortex, 48, 905–922.
Glenberg, A. M., Goldberg, A. B., & Zhu, X. (2011). Improving early reading comprehension using embodied CAI. Instructional
Science, 39, 27–39.
Glenberg, A. M., Gutierrez, T., Levin, J. R., Japuntich, S., & Kaschak, M. P. (2004). Activity and imagined activity can enhance young
children’s reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 424–436.
Griffin, T., Hemphill, L., Camp, L., & Wolf, D. (2004). Oral discourse in the preschool years and later literacy skills. First Language,
24, 123–147.
Grissmer, D., Grimm, K. J., Aiyer, S. M., Murrah, W. M., & Steele, J. S. (2010). Fine motor skills and early comprehension of the
world: Two new school readiness indicators. Developmental Psychology, 46, 1008–1017.
James, K. H., & Gauthier, I. (2006). Letter processing automatically recruits a sensory-motor brain network. Neuropsychologia, 44,
2937–2949.
Jansen, H., Mannhaupt, G., Marx, H., & Skowronek, H. (2002). Bielefelder Screening zur Früherkennung von Lese-
Rechtschreibschwierigkeiten 2, überarbeitete Auflage [Bielefelder Screening for Reading and Spelling Difficulties, 2nd revised
edition]. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
Justice, L. M., Kaderavek, J. N., Fan, X., Sofka, A., & Hunt, A. (2009). Accelerating preschoolers’ early literacy development through
classroom-based teacher–child storybook reading and explicit print referencing. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in
Schools, 40, 67–85.
Kirby, J. R., Parrila, R. K., & Pfeiffer, S. L. (2003). Naming speed and phonological awareness as predictors of reading development.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 453–464.
Krampen, G. (2007). Kaseler-Konzentrations-Aufgabe für 3- bis 8-Jährige [Kaseler Concentration Test for 3- to 8-year-olds] [manual].
Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe.
Longcamp, M., Anton, J. L., Roth, M., & Velay, J. L. (2005). Premotor activations in response to visually presented single letters
depend on the hand used to write: A study on left-handers. Neuropsychologia, 43, 1801–1809.
Lonigan, C. J., Schatschneider, C., Westberg, L., & National Early Literacy Panel (2008). Identification of children’s skills and
abilities linked to later outcomes in reading, writing, and spelling. In National Early Literacy Panel (Ed.), Developing Early
Literacy: A Scientific Synthesis of Early Literacy Development and Implications for Intervention (pp. 55–105). Jessup, MD:
National Institute for Literacy.
Luo, Z., Jose, P. E., Huntsinger, C. S., & Pigott, T. D. (2007). Fine motor skills and mathematics achievement in East Asian American
and European American kindergartners and first graders. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 25, 595–614.
Michel, E., Roethlisberger, M., Neuenschwander, R., & Roebers, C. M. (2011). Development of cognitive skills in children with
motor coordination impairments at 12-month follow-up. Child Neuropsychology, 17, 151–172.
Molfese, V. J., Beswick, J. L., Jacobi-Vessels, J. L., Armstrong, N. E., Culver, B. L., White, J. M., et al (2011). Evidence of alphabetic
knowledge in writing: Connections to letter and word identification skills in preschool and kindergarten. Reading and
Writing, 24, 133–150.
Morrison, F. J., Griffith, E. M., & Alberts, D. M. (1997). Nature–nurture in the classroom: Entrance age, school readiness, and
learning in children. Developmental Psychology, 33, 254–262.
Morrison, F. J., & Hindman, A. H. (2012). Promoting school readiness: An integrative framework. In S. P. Suggate & E. Reese (Eds.),
Contemporary debates in child development and education (pp. 133–142). London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.
48 S. Suggate et al. / Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 141 (2016) 34–48

Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note
taking. Psychological Science, 25, 1159–1168.
Ouellette, G., & Beers, A. (2010). A not-so-simple view of reading: How oral vocabulary and visual-word recognition complicate
the story. Reading and Writing, 23(2), 189–208. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11145-008-9159-1.
Ouellette, G., & Sénéchal, M. (2008). Pathways to literacy: A study of invented spelling and its role in learning to read. Child
Development, 79, 899–913.
Pagani, L. S., Fitzpatrick, C., Archambault, I., & Janosz, M. (2010). School readiness and later achievement: A French Canadian
replication and extension. Developmental Psychology, 46, 984–994.
Petermann, F., & Petermann, U. (2010). HAWIK-IV (3rd ed.) [Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–IV]. Bern, Switzerland:
Huber.
Petermann, F., Bös, K., & Kastner, J. (2011). Movement Assessment Battery for Children–second edition. Frankfurt am Main,
Germany: Pearson Assessment.
Ratzon, N. Z., Efraim, D., & Bart, O. (2007). A short-term grapho-motor program for improving writing readiness of skills of first-
grade students. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 61, 399–405.
Reichen, J. (2008). Lesen durch Schreiben: Lesenlernen ohne Leseunterricht [Reading through writing: Learning to read without
reading instruction]. Grundschulunterricht Deutsch, 2, 4–8.
Rosenthal, J., & Ehri, L. C. (2008). The mnemonic value of orthography for vocabulary learning. Journal of Educational Psychology,
100, 175–191.
Rutter, M. (1989). Age as an ambiguous variable in developmental research: Some epidemiological considerations from
developmental psychopathology. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 12, 1–34.
Schatschneider, C., Francis, D. J., Foorman, B. R., & Fletcher, J. M. (1999). The dimensionality of phonological awareness: An
application of item response theory. Journal of Educational Psychology, 91, 439–449.
Sénéchal, M., LeFevre, J., Thomas, E. M., & Daley, K. E. (1998). Differential effects of home literacy experiences on the
development of oral and written language. Reading Research Quarterly, 33, 96–116.
Shahar-Yames, D., & Share, D. L. (2008). Spelling as a self-teaching mechanism in orthographic learning. Journal of Research in
Reading, 31, 22–39.
Son, S.-H., & Meisels, S. J. (2006). The relationship of young children’s motor skills to later reading and math achievement.
Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 52, 755–778.
Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Unterricht und Kultus (StMuK) (2000). Lehrplan für die bayerische Grundschule [Curriculum for
Bavarian elementary schools]. München, Germany: Author.
Stachelhaus, A., & Strauß, B. (2005). Die Förderung graphomotorischer Fertigkeiten von Erstklässlern durch psychomotorische
Übungen im Sportunterricht [Supporting first-graders grapho-motor skills through psycho-motor exercises during physical
education class]. Zeitschrift für Entwicklungspsychologie und Pädagogische Psychologie, 37, 194–204.
Stoeger, H., Ziegler, A., & Martzog, P. (2008). Deficits in fine motor skill as an important factor in the identification of gifted
underachievers in primary school. Psychology Science Quarterly, 2, 134–146.
Suggate, S. P. (2010). Why ‘‘what’’ we teach depends on ‘‘when’’: Grade and reading intervention modality moderate effect size.
Developmental Psychology, 46, 1556–1579.
Suggate, S. P. (2014). A meta-analysis of the long-term effects of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and reading
comprehension interventions. Journal of Learning Disabilities. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022219414528540.
Suggate, S. P., Reese, E., Lenhard, W., & Schneider, W. (2014). The relative contributions of vocabulary, decoding, and phonemic
awareness to word reading in English versus German. Reading and Writing, 27, 1395–1412.
Suggate, S. P., & Stoeger, H. (2014). Do nimble hands make for nimble lexicons? Fine motor skills predict knowledge of
embodied vocabulary items. First Language, 34, 244–261.
Sweller, J., van Merrienboer, J., & Paas, F. (1998). Cognitive architecture and instructional design. Educational Psychology Review,
10, 251–296.
Viholainen, H., Aro, M., Ahonen, T., Crawford, S., Cantell, M., & Kooistra, L. (2011). Are balance problems connected to reading
speed or the familial risk of dyslexia? Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 53, 350–353.
von Soden-Fraunhofen, R., Sim, E., Liebich, S., Frank, K., & Kiefer, M. (2007). Die Rolle der motorischen Interaktion beim Erwerb
begrifflichen Wissens: Eine Trainingsstudie mit künstlichen Objekten [The role of motor interactions during the acquisition
of conceptual knowledge: A training study with novel objects]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie, 22, 47–58.
Whitehurst, G. J., & Lonigan, C. J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child Development, 69, 848–872.
Whitehurst, G. J., & Lonigan, C. J. (2001). Emergent literacy: Development from prereaders to readers. In S. B. Newman & D. K.
Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 11–29). New York: Guilford.
Wilson, M. (2002). Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 9, 625–636.
Wohlschläger, A. W. A. (1988). Mental and manual rotation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 24, 397–412.
Zwaan, R. A., & Taylor, L. J. (2006). Seeing, acting, understanding: Motor resonance in language comprehension. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 1–11.