Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Research suggests individual differences in motor skills may be associated with reading ability in school-age children. This meta-analysis explored whether deficits in motor skills are evident in developmental dyslexia, using estimates from 33 studies (k) with 122 effects (m) from dyslexic and age-matched neurotypical samples (N dyslexia = 1248, M age = 11.6 years, range 7.0 to 25.3 years). An overall effect of moderate magnitude, g = –.52 [95% CI –.74; –.29], confirmed that motor skills are impaired in dyslexia. Meta-regression analyses indicated no significant effects of participant age or language. Subgroup analyses revealed significant group differences for tasks with nonlinguistic stimuli (k = 28, m = 83), e.g., pegboard task, g = –.46 [–.71; –.22], or linguistic stimuli (k = 10, m = 39), e.g., word copying task, g = –.66 [–1.09; –.24]. Effects were significant for groups with confirmed dyslexia diagnoses (k = 27, m = 103), g = –.56 [–.81; –.30], but not for groups identified as poor readers, (k = 6, m = 19), g = –.32 [–.93; .28]. Effects were significant for fine motor skills (k = 29, m = 106), g = –.61 [95% CI –.83; –.39], but not for gross motor or composite measures (k = 10, m = 16), g = –.26 [95% CI –.76; .24]. The results suggest that fine motor tasks might help to identify children at risk of dyslexia. Longitudinal research may further elucidate relations between motor and reading skills.