title: Handwriting generates variable visual output to facilitate symbol learning.
abstract: Recent research has demonstrated that handwriting practice facilitates letter categorization in young children. The present experiments investigated why handwriting practice facilitates visual categorization by comparing 2 hypotheses: that handwriting exerts its facilitative effect because of the visual-motor production of forms, resulting in a direct link between motor and perceptual systems, or because handwriting produces variable visual instances of a named category in the environment that then changes neural systems. We addressed these issues by measuring performance of 5-year-old children on a categorization task involving novel, Greek symbols across 6 different types of learning conditions: 3 involving visual-motor practice (copying typed symbols independently, tracing typed symbols, tracing handwritten symbols) and 3 involving visual-auditory practice (seeing and saying typed symbols of a single typed font, of variable typed fonts, and of handwritten examples). We could therefore compare visual-motor production with visual perception both of variable and similar forms. Comparisons across the 6 conditions (N = 72) demonstrated that all conditions that involved studying highly variable instances of a symbol facilitated symbol categorization relative to conditions where similar instances of a symbol were learned, regardless of visual-motor production. Therefore, learning perceptually variable instances of a category enhanced performance, suggesting that handwriting facilitates symbol understanding by virtue of its environmental output: supporting the notion of developmental change though brain-body-environment interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University.
authors.forename: Julia X
authors.initials: JX
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University.
authors.forename: Karin H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: James
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003210:Concept Formation / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006236:Handwriting; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*