Benefit of Typoscope on Transcription in Children with Writing Difficulties: A Study of Three Cases

The typoscope has been considered as an important aid for children with learning disabilities (LD) who struggle with reading. It is also believed to be helpful for children with writing difficulties who struggle with copying tasks. Surprisingly, however, no academic evidence has yet been found that the typoscope works for these children. This study aimed to analyze the effects of typoscoping in three Japanese children with writing difficulties for the task of copying Japanese character lines using eye-tracking glasses. A copying task was presented to three children with LD and three with typical development (TD). This consisted of copying 22 target letters (characters) of the hiragana (Japanese phonogram), randomly arranged on a sample sheet, onto a blank 18 mm square grid sheet. Children with LD took longer to complete the copying task without using a typoscope than children with TD. In the copying task with the typoscope, their time was similar to children with TD. The eye-tracking data showed that all three children with LD tended to lose targets in the copying task without the use of a typoscope but were less likely to lose targets if they used a typoscope. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that the use of typoscope effectively reduced the target search load and shortened the transcription time for the children with LD.