Evaluation of a group-based sensorimotor intervention programme to improve Chinese handwriting of primary school students.

OBJECTIVE: Sensorimotor performance is influential in Chinese handwriting, but few studies have examined the efficacy of sensorimotor-based interventions on Chinese handwriting among primary school students with poor handwriting performance. The study aims to evaluate a sensorimotor-based intervention to improve handwriting in the mainstream primary schools.

METHODS: This study adopted a two-group pretest-posttest design. An 8-session group-based sensorimotor intervention was delivered to school-aged children (mean age = 8.1, 68% male). Group A had 2 sessions every week, while Group B had 4 sessions every week. Analysis of variance with repeated measures was used to test the effects.

RESULTS: The intervention had a significant time effect ( p  < .05) in terms of improving handwriting process ( d  = 0.33-1.10), manual dexterity ( d  = 0.57), visual memory ( d  = 0.70), visual-spatial perception ( d  = 0.37), and motor and postural skills ( d  = 0.73). The effect sizes ranged from medium to large. For the handwriting process, time per character had a significant group × time interaction, with post hoc analysis showing that Group A had a significantly large effect ( d  = 1.89, p  < .001) while Group B did not.

CONCLUSIONS: The group-based sensorimotor intervention programme appeared to show improvements in students with fair skills in writing Chinese characters. It appears that the effect is better if the training sessions are spaced out in one month rather than intensively conducted within two weeks. It might be related to more involvement from parents, and students need more time for practice after the training sessions.