ABSTRACT
There has been increased interest in recent years in the writing skills of children with specific learning or developmental difficulties such as dyslexia, specific language impairment, and developmental coordination disorder. These diagnoses refer to primary difficulties in specific domains of development, although the child’s overall development and intellectual ability are typically within average range. This chapter reviews the recent work in this area and introduces issues in keeping with the goals of this volume, the application of cognitive models of writing development, which has been given insufficient attention in assessment and intervention with these clinical populations. We explain how cognitive models have shaped and influenced our ideas about how these conditions interact with both the process of learning to write and the nature of a child’s language or motor difficulties. Moreover, research and clinical practices for both language and motor disorder are increasingly beginning to consider issues related to learning to write within a more complex view, integrating developmental models of writing with developmental models of oral language and motor skills.
