Although handwriting is typically taught during early childhood and keyboarding may not be taught explicitly, both may be relevant to writing development in the later grades. Thus, Study 1 investigated automatic production of the ordered alphabet from memory for manuscript (unjoined), cursive (joined), and keyboard letter modes (alphabet 15 sec) and their relationships with each other and spelling and composing in typically developing writers in grades 4 to 7 (<i>N</i> = 113). Study 2 compared students with dysgraphia (impaired handwriting, <i>n</i>=27), dyslexia (impaired word spelling, <i>n</i>=40), or oral and written language learning disability (OWL LD) (impaired syntax composing, <i>n</i>=11) or controls without specific writing disabilities (<i>n</i>=10) in grades 4 to 9 (<i>N</i>=88) on the same alphabet 15 modes, manner of copying (best or fast), spelling, and sentence composing. In Study 1, sequential multilevel model regressions of predictor alphabet 15 letter production/selection modes on spelling and composition outcomes, measured annually from grade 4 to grade 7 (ages 9 to 13 years), showed that only the cursive mode <i>uniquely</i>, positively, and consistently predicted both spelling and composing in each grade. For composing, in grade 4 manuscript mode was positively predictive and in grades 5-7 keyboard selection was. In Study 2 all letter production modes correlated with each other and one's best and fast sentence copying, spelling, and timed sentence composing. The groups with specific writing disabilities differed from control group on alphabet 15 manuscript mode, copy fast, and timed sentence composing. The dysgraphia and dyslexia groups differed on copying sentences in one's best handwriting, with the dysgraphia group scoring lower. The educational and theoretical significance of the findings are discussed for multiple modes and manners of letter production/selection of the alphabet that support spelling and composing beyond the early grades in students with and without specific writing disabilities.

Children (aged 10 to 12) with spelling disability (related to dyslexia) or with good spelling ability performed 2 fMRI nonverbal working memory tasks of comparable difficulty across groups in and out of the scanner-judging whether a pictured sea creature appeared two trials earlier (2-back) or was a target whale (0-back).The 2-back versus 0-back contrast captures ability of working memory to track changes over time. On this contrast, the good spellers and disabled spellers showed significant BOLD activation in many and generally the same brain regions. On group map comparisons, the good spellers never activated more than the disabled spellers, but the disabled spellers activated more than the good spellers in selected brain regions. Of most interest, 2 clusters of BOLD activation (distributed across brain regions) were observed in good spellers but 5 clusters were observed in disabled spellers. Within these clusters the good and disabled spellers differed in three regions (bilateral medial superior frontal gyrus, orbital middle frontal gyrus, and anterior cingulated), which are associated with cognition, executive functions, and working memory and were correlated with a behavioral spelling measure. Thus working memory is best described as a distributed architecture rather than a single mechanism; and good and poor spellers engage working memory architecture differently. We propose that spelling is an executive function for translating cognition into language (sounds and morphemes) and then into visual symbols rather than a mere transcription skill for translating words in memory into written symbols in external memory.