THEORY-BASED DIAGNOSIS AND REMEDIATION OF WRITING DISABILITIES

Writing disabilities have received far less attention than reading disabilities. This relative neglect is concerning because children are routinely referred to school psychologists for assessment of writing problems that range from poor handwriting or spelling to failure to complete written assignments to inability to communicate in grammatical, coherent written text. To assist school psychologists in better serving the needs of writing-disabled children, this article (a) briefly reviews recent trends in the research on writing, including a change in emphasis from the product to the process of writing; (b) introduces a theory-based model that is being developed for differential diagnosis of writing disabilities at the neuropsychological, linguistic, and cognitive levels; (c) presents cases and patterns in cases that illustrate differential diagnosis of writing disabilities at the linguistic level; and (d) suggests possible interventions for specific. © 1991.