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A new study reveals that Autistic children are more likely to have problems in handwriting than those without autism. The study was conducted by researchers at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. Handwriting samples, motor skills, and visuospatial abilities of children were compared with autism spectrum disorders to typically developing children. The researchers found that handwriting of children with ASD was worse than that of typically developing children. Particularly, children with ASD had trouble forming letters. In other categories like size, alignment, and spacing, their handwriting was comparable to that of typically developing children. Parents of children with ASD are often the first ones to examine their children’s poor handwriting quality. This finding recognises fine motor control as a core source of the problem and reveals that children with ASD may not have difficulties across all domains. By identifying handwriting as a valid impairment, parents, teachers and therapists will now be able to follow techniques that will improve children’s handwriting. "The ability to keep up in classes and convey ideas through handwriting is fundamental to life," said Christina Fuentes, lead study author and researcher at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. "Knowing the causes of impairment allows us to strategically identify techniques that will help children with ASD improve their handwriting”. “Our study suggests that teaching children how to form letters, in combination with general training of fine motor control through techniques that include stabilizing the arm and the use of proper writing utensils, may be the best direction for improving handwriting performance," Fuentes added. The study has been published in the journal, Neurology.