This analysis considered two separate time-frames.
The first analysis examined whether the children with DCD paused for a higher percentage within a small time-frame of between 30-250 milliseconds (ms). This time-frame was chosen from the literature, as it is thought to represent the graphomotor component of handwriting (Alamargot et al, 2010). Research on pauses in writing by Alamargot et al (2010) using an eye tracker and writing tablet established a link between short pauses and graphomotor execution, particularly pauses between 78- PV+RZHYHULWLVQRWFOHDUIURPWKHOLWHUDWXUHH[DFWO\ZKDWLVPHDQWE\µJUDSKRPRWRU¶DFWLYLW\,W could include for example, the transition between individual letters, or a split second pause between letter strokes. Nevertheless, short pauses are thought to represent the pauses that occur specifically at the letter level. The study by Alamargot et al (2010) included a small sample size of five participants ranging from a novice, grade 6 writer to an expert published author. Therefore, the time-frame for capturing letter level pauses in their study was adjusted for the current analysis given the focus on children in this study. For this reason the time-frame of 30-250ms was selected for analysis. Since children with DCD have motor difficulties, it was hypothesised that they would pause for a greater percentage of time within this time-frame due to possible difficulties manipulating the pen to form the letters.
Initially, the threshold on the Eye and Pen 1 (EP1) software was set at 30ms. All the pauses above 30ms were extracted first. Once this was completed, the threshold on EP1 was set at 250ms and all pauses above this threshold were extracted. The total time pausing above 250ms was subtracted from the total time pausing over 30ms. This provided the time spent pausing between 30-250ms. This process is summarised in Table 4.7. The time spent pausing within this time frame was then calculated as a percentage of the overall pausing time on the free-writing task, which was presented in Part 1.
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Table 4.7The formula used for calculating the total time pausing within each time-frame
Total time pausing above threshold
- Total time pausing
above threshold
= Total time pausing
within time-frame 1 30ms - 250ms = 30-250ms 2 250ms - 2000ms = 250ms-2s 3 2000ms - 4000ms = 2-4 s 4 4000ms - 10000ms = 4-10 s 5 10000ms = 10000ms ms= milliseconds, s=seconds
The second time frame used to examine between letter pauses was 250ms-2 seconds (s). This was chosen based on previous research by Rosenbum and Livneh-Zirinski (2008), where children with DCD were found to pause for longer between letter strokes. Rosenblum and Livneh-Zirinski (2008) reported in-air time (pause time) ranging from .37s to 1.27s on the alphabet task suggesting that this was the pause time which occurred between letters. Therefore, the time spent pausing within a 250ms- 2s time-frame was analysed and calculated as a percentage of the overall pause time. See Table 4.7 for the analysis protocol.
4.9.2 Pausing at the Word-level
To examine word level pauses, the time frame for analysis was between 2-4 seconds (s). This was chosen from the literature on writing, where a 2 second pause in typically developing writers is considered to represent a pause from formulating the text in order to access a higher-level writing process such as planning (Alamargot et al, 2010; Alves et al., 2007; Wengelin, 2007). It was important to capture pauses at or above 2 seconds to examine pauses at the word level. However, it was also
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important to restrict the pause time-frame to below 4 seconds, so lengthy pauses possibly due to fatigue could be measured separately. See Table 4.7 for the analysis protocol.
Two dependent measures were calculated for this time-frame. The first was the percentage of pause time spent pausing in this time-frame. The second was mean pause duration in order to ascertain whether children with DCD paused for longer on average than their TD peers.
4.9.3 Long Pauses.
This analysis consisted of two separate time-frames.
The first time-frame analysed was between 4-10 seconds. A pause that was greater than four seconds was considered to represent a higher level writing process (generating ideas) or resting due to fatigue. See Table 4.7 for the analysis protocol.
The second time-frame to examine long pauses included pauses at or above 10 seconds. A pause above 10 seconds was considered to be a significant halt in the writing activity, possibly due to fatigue or a lack of writing ideas. Research by Alamargot et al (2010) found that the younger, 6th grade writer
paused at times for over 10 seconds.
For the above analysis the dependant variables included the total time pausing in each time-frame and the percentage of overall pause time that occurred within each time-frame. Mean pause duration was not considered for pauses over 10 seconds as the purpose of the analysis was to identify whether long pauses occurred or not.
4.9.4 Frequency of Pauses
The frequency of pausing was also of interest in this study. Alamargot et al (2010) found no difference in the frequency of pausing between a novice writer and an expert author. However, it is not known whether children with DCD demonstrate similar frequencies of pausing compared to TD children. It remains unknown whether their pausing behaviour is driven by the length of their pauses rather than the frequency. To consider this, the frequency of pauses was only considered above 250 milliseconds and over 10 seconds. The dependent variables for frequency included the number of pauses that occurred over 250ms and 10 seconds.