The influence of script type on handwriting in children with dyslexia: a comparison across Cyrillic and Latin scripts

The present study investigated whether script type (Latin vs. Cyrillic) differentially influences the temporal characteristics of handwriting in children with dyslexia, chronological age-matched controls (CA), and spelling-level matched controls (SL). Four tasks varying in cognitive and linguistic demands were administered: name and surname writing, an alphabet task, a dictation task including real words, pseudowords, and nonwords, and a text composition task. Temporal handwriting measures were obtained using Eye and Pen software. Writing in Cyrillic generally required longer total task duration than writing in Latin. Across groups, total task duration was longer in Cyrillic during the name and surname, alphabet, real word, and composition tasks. Significant Group × Script interactions for total task duration were observed only in the pseudoword and nonword tasks, indicating that the CA and SL groups required more time to write in Cyrillic than in Latin, whereas no significant script-related difference was observed in the children with dyslexia. A significant Group × Script interaction for pen speed was observed only in the pseudoword task, where children with dyslexia wrote faster in Cyrillic than in Latin. In the composition task, Cyrillic was associated with longer writing duration, longer pause duration, and a greater percentage of pause time across groups, whereas a significant Group × Script interaction was observed only for between-word pauses. The findings suggest that script-specific visual-orthographic characteristics contribute to handwriting performance, while differences between children with dyslexia and typically developing peers emerge for selected handwriting measures under specific task demands.