Poor handwriting has been shown to be associated with developmental disorders such as Developmental Coordination Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, autism, and learning disorders. Handwriting difficulties could lead to academic underachievement and poor self-esteem. Therapeutic intervention has been shown to be effective in treating children with poor handwriting, making early identification critical. The SOS test (Systematic Screening for Handwriting Difficulties) has been developed for this purpose. A child copies a sample of writing within 5 min. Handwriting quality is evaluated using six criteria and writing speed is measured. The Dutch SOS test was administered to 860 Flemish children (7–12 years). Inter- and intrarater reliability was excellent. Test–retest reliability was moderate. A correlation coefficient of 0.70 between SOS and “Concise Assessment Methods of Children Handwriting” test (Dutch version) confirmed convergent validity. The SOS allowed discrimination between typically developing children and children in special education, males and females, and different age groups.

The present fMRI study investigated the neural areas involved in implicit perceptual sequence learning. To obtain more insight in the functional contributions of the brain areas, we tracked both the behavioral and neural time course of the learning process, using a perceptual serial color matching task. Next, to investigate whether the neural time course was specific for perceptual information, imaging results were compared to the results of implicit motor sequence learning, previously investigated using an identical serial color matching task (Gheysen et al., 2010). Results indicated that implicit sequences can be acquired by at least two neural systems: the caudate nucleus and the hippocampus, having different operating principles. The caudate nucleus contributed to the implicit sequence learning process for perceptual as well as motor information in a similar and gradual way. The hippocampus, on the other hand, was engaged in a much faster learning process which was more pronounced for the motor compared to the perceptual task. Interestingly, the perceptual and motor learning process occurred on a comparable implicit level, suggesting that consciousness is not the main determinant factor dissociating the hippocampal from the caudate learning system. This study is not only the first to successfully and unambiguously compare brain activation between perceptual and motor levels of implicit sequence learning, it also provides new insights into the specific hippocampal and caudate learning function.

To explore the possibility that 4- and 5-year-old Flemish children would perform differently from children of the same age in the US standardization sample of the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (M-ABC). Two hundred sixty-seven 4-year-old and 239 5-year-old Flemish children without known impairments, from regular schools, took part in the study (260 boys, 246 girls). All children were individually assessed using the M-ABC. The total M-ABC score of the 4-year-old children was similar to that of their peers in the United States. The 5-year-old Flemish children performed significantly better, although the effect size of the difference was very small. Of the 5-year-old children, one scored at the 5th percentile (0.4%) and 5.0% of the children scored below the 15th percentile. United States norms are appropriate for 4-year-old Flemish children but require adjustment if they are to identify 5-year-old Flemish children with mild motor impairment.