The ability to copy a text in children with spelling difficulties

The ability to copy is strongly related to the spelling skill, but it is less clear whether dysorthography could affect both the performance in a copy text task and the type of errors made. To examine this aspect, from a large sample, we selected 90 students with spelling difficulties, based on their low performance both in dictation of words and dictation of non-words (<= 20th percentile). They were compared to 90 students who had good spelling abilities (>= 80th per-centile). The two groups performed differently in the copy task (BVSCO, Battery for the assess-ment of writing and spelling accuracy) both in the number of words copied and in the percentage of errors. Moreover, the pattern of errors of the two groups in the copy task and in the dictation text is slightly different.