Touch-screen-based assessment of fine motor skills for handwriting: a pilot study

The acquisition of spatially encoded concepts related to basic geometric shapes appears as a fundamental element for the development of handwriting skills and represents an important educational issue. The focus of this work rotates around conceptual node formed by the interaction of body, space, motor control, motor equivalence and technologies in the acquisition of fine motor skills functional to handwriting. This project aims to develop software for the assessment of handwriting and spatial coding skills. The software is natively designed for use on touch screens and is intended for use by children in kindergarten (age between the three and six years). By extension, the software also addresses subjects at a later age that present specific learning disabilities in the context of handwriting. The software developed so far adds an interactive layer upon an image, allowing the finger to follow the suggested path. The software records in xml format the drawing made by the user and the time taken, and verifies what points are adhering to the proposed route and which ones differ significantly.