Major Developmental Characteristics of Children's Name Writing and Relationships with Fine Motor Skills and Emergent Literacy Skills.

This dissertation attempts to contribute to the field of early childhood education by exploring the nature of children’s name writing development. Name writing involves not only emergent literacy skills but also fine motor skills. Three studies are included in the dissertation: Study One focuses on identifying the major characteristics in children’s name writing development. Study Two validated the name writing scale proposed by the analysis in Study One. Using the proposed name writing scale, Study Three explored the relationships among name writing development, emergent literacy skills and fine motor skills. The data examined by the dissertation were drawn from the longitudinal project Enhanced HS-MAP Intervention: Linking Program Evaluation and Child Outcomes (Dickstein, Seifer, & Miller, 2002-2006). A total of 641 name writing samples produced by 321 Head Start children as well as their DIAL-3 (Mardell-Czudnowski & Goldenberg, 1998) test scores were included. The major findings of the study suggest: 1). There are several name writing developmental characteristics; however, not all of them appear as distinctive levels in the development of name writing. After qualitative and quantitative analysis, the dissertation identified five major name writing characteristics that can be distinguished using the criteria of frequent appearance and distinctive age of appearance; they are Aimless scribbles, Flat/wavy scribble or None/refusal, Symbols or letter-like units, One or few letters from name, and Conventional or spelling almost correct. 2). A qualitative examination of the longitudinal data suggested that only a few individual children’s showed name writing development that was not a monotonic development. Some children will stay in a level for several months, and some will skip a level or two. 3). Among fine motor skills and literacy skills variables, Letters and sounds has the strongest positive relationship with three-year-olds’ name writing development, but copying skills is the most important factor that influences four-year-olds’ name writing development. Since most five-year-old children could write their names conventionally, there is apparently a ceiling effect for five-year-old children. The cognitive variables that predict level of name writing vary with development.