Research into the difficulties children with dyslexia can experience when handwriting was presented at one of Liverpool Hope University’s Psychology Seminars.
Former Hope Psychology student Dr Emma Sumner, now a lecturer at University College London (UCL), outlined her work into how youngsters struggling with skills required while writing can face a barrier to education.
She demonstrated how a difficulty with reading and spelling extended to broader problems with writing for the young people who took part in her study.
Dr Sumner explained that children with dyslexia paused for 73% of the time it took to carry out a writing task in her research.
They also avoided writing more complex words, and tended to cross out more text before going back to add more later.
The dyslexic children she worked with also stopped writing before their peers, and would need advice on what to do with the remaining time in tests.
Dr Sumner, who graduated with a First Class degree in Psychology and Human Biology at Hope in 2009, also worked at the University as a research assistant with Dr Lorna Bourke on a project investigating visuo-spatial short-term and working memory in emergent writers.
She went on to further study at Oxford Broookes University, where she completed her doctorate in 2012.