Investigation of the Relationships between Pen Grips and Long Writing Performance

Backgroundand and Purpose: Writing skill is one of the most important skills for children during their learning process. The results of previous studies concluded that there was no significant effect of pen grips on writing performance in general. However, the classification of pen grips and fundamental designs of those studies were controversial. Besides, according to clinical observations, there seems to be many traits of pen grip in common among children who have writing difficulties and related problems, such as using proximal grips and inward direction of penpoint, which strongly implies that there should be certain relationships between pen grip and writing performance. Thus, the main purpose of this study was to systematically investigate the effects of pen grip, using a classification method from a new perspective, on long writing performance.
Method: one hundred and twenty kindergarteners came from three kindergartens located in Taipei metropolis were recruited for this study basing on their legibility (best and worst 10%). All of them had no history and related diagnosis of sensorimotor disabilities. Writing test was performed individually without stop which took an average of 10 minutes. Due to changes of grips during the test, data of three were excluded and 117 (62 females and 55 males) children’s data were finally collected and then analyzed
Results: Multiple regression model analysis revealed significant effects of all grip related factors such as pen grip style, direction of penpoint and distance between penpoint and pen holding point on writing speed via complex interrelationship with each other and other non grip related variables. As for writing legibility, only one grip related interaction (distance between penpoint and pen-holding point x boy) was shown significantly but with extremely low r-square value (<0.0336), revealing limited effect on writing legibility. R-square value was 20.59% for writing efficiency analysis and 34.89% for writing legibility analysis.
Conclusion: The finding of this study might demonstrate significant effects of pen grips on writing speed, but limited correlation to writing legibility. A low correlation between writing speed and legibility was noted, but it might be due to a trade-off mechanism between them. Pen grip might partially explain the performance of writing speed, but other potential covariates, such as sensorimotor and executive functions, might help explain the rest and make better prediction, which were suggested to be taken into account in future studies.