Impact of Physical Disability on English Alphabet Formation Skills in Children from 7 Years to 14 Years of Age: Case-control Study

Children have to master writing timely to accomplish educational and professional endeavors. Impaired cognition or perceptual abilities usually result in poor handwriting. Children with physical disability may also have hidden affectation in handwriting which requires specific intervention.

Studying impact of physical disability on English Alphabet formation skills in disabled children from 7 years to 14 years and compare with age and sex matched controls.

A Case-control study planned for 12 months was carried out in a tertiary rehabilitation center. 60 participants (30 case and 30 age and sex matched control) were selected through non-randomized convenient sampling. Cases were physically disabled children of age group 7 to 14 years with knowledge of English alphabets with good cognitive abilities, ability to sit erect and hold writing device. The Printing tool® Handwriting Without Tears ® curriculum, USA was applied to assess capital alphabet formation.

Each group consisted of 7 females and 23 males. Mean ages were 9.1 years for males and 7.1 years for females. Cases with central motor disorders (23) were more than those with only peripheral involvement (7). Wilcoxon's test with significance level of.05 showed that there was significant different in domains of Memory (P=.004), Placement (P=.001), Size (P=.001), Start (P=.026) and Sequence (P=.001) but not in Orientation. Children with physical disability took significantly more time than healthy (P <.05). Odds ratio showed that in physically disabled children, memory was 9 times and size was 32 times more affected when writing capital alphabets.

Physical disability significantly affects capital alphabet formation and time taken to write in children between 7 years to 14 years with more predispositions for memory and size of alphabets.