Children with dyslexia are slow writers because they pause more often and not because they are slow at handwriting execution

It is commonly assumed that children with dyslexia are slower at
handwriting than other children. However, evidence of slow handwriting in children
with dyslexia is very mixed. Thirty-one children with dyslexia, aged 9 years, were
compared to both age-matched children and younger spelling-ability matched
children. Participants completed an alphabet-writing task and a composition task on
the surface of a digital writing tablet. Children with dyslexia wrote the same amount
of letters per minute in the alphabet task but wrote fewer words per minute when
composing their texts than children of the same age. Crucially, no differences were
found between children with dyslexia and their same age peers for speed of
handwriting execution, measured by the tablet, when writing the alphabet or
composing their texts. However, children with dyslexia were found to pause within
their compositions as often as the spelling ability matched group. Thus handwriting
execution is not impaired in children with dyslexia. The slow writing that is typical
of children with dyslexia is due to pausing more often when composing and is
related to spelling ability. This may reflect processing problems in response to high
cognitive load through having to contend with spelling and composing concurrently.