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PubMed2000

Detecting anticipatory events in handwriting movements.

We investigated how visual processes exploit specific anticipatory movements observed in handwriting gestures. Previous research has shown that the kinematic information contained in the downstroke of an l is exploited to predict the identity of the forthcoming letter. Here, we determined the moment at which prediction takes place. Two between-letter effects were examined: changes in size (ll vs le) and changes in rotation direction (le vs ln). Results show that with only 75% of the l downstroke trajectory (or 60% of the downstroke time) subjects are already capable of predicting the identity of the letter following the l, that is well before the end of the downstroke. Analysis also reveals that identification takes place after the presentation of the movement acceleration phase. The visual perception of motor anticipation seems to involve the detection of motor events.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Effects of different task factors on speed and preferences in Chinese handwriting.

This study was conducted to determine the speed of Chinese handwriting and explore the effects of the task factors, tool type, paper texture, writing plane angle, and line spacing on writing speed and subjective preferences. The results showed that the average duration of writing a 9-stroke character was 1487 ms. Paper texture and line spacing had a significant effect on production speed. Uncoated paper and 3 mm-line spacing enhanced writing speed. Subjects had clear preferences for writing with a pen, on uncoated paper, in a horizontal plane, and with relatively wide line spacing (5 mm/7 mm/lineless). There was a conflict between writing speed and personal preference on the line spacing factor. Although narrow line spacing (3 mm) increased writing speed, it was not preferred by the subjects over wider spacing on the evaluation attributes of comfort, ease, fatigue, and overall preference. To take a balance between writing speed and personal preference, a line spacing of at least 5 mm is recommended.

Adult↗
PubMed2002

Judging gender from samples of adult handwriting: accuracy and use of cues.

In 2 experiments, participants judged 2 samples of adult handwriting for gender of writer; their accuracy was significantly better than chance and improved with practice. In a 3rd experiment, participants who were not cued for gender of writer judged coded male and female scripts to be significantly different with respect to features such as carefulness, neatness, regularity, and apparent speed of execution. The participants cued for gender of writer on the basis of their judgments on stylistic features such as slope and roundness, which appeared to be subsumed within the "higher order" dimensions of carefulness versus confidence. The results suggest that the participants cued for gender of writer may have been influenced by gender stereotypes, leading to errors in some of their judgments.

Adolescent↗
PubMed2006

Maximization of mutual information for offline Thai handwriting recognition.

This paper aims to improve the performance of an HMM-based offline Thai handwriting recognition system through discriminative training and the use of fine-tuned feature extraction methods. The discriminative training is implemented by maximizing the mutual information between the data and their classes. The feature extraction is based on our proposed block-based PCA and composite images, shown to be better at discriminating Thai confusable characters. We demonstrate significant improvements in recognition accuracies compared to the classifiers that are not discriminatively optimized.

Algorithms↗
PubMed2006

A framework toward restoration of writing order from single-stroked handwriting image.

Restoration of writing order from a single-stroked handwriting image can be seen as the problem of finding the smoothest path in its graph representation. In this paper, a 3-phase approach to restore a writing order is proposed within the framework of the Edge Continuity Relation (ECR). In the initial, local phase, in order to obtain possible ECRs at an even-degree node, a neural network is used for the node of degree 4 and a theoretical approach is presented for the node of degree higher than 4 by introducing certain reasonable assumptions. In the second phase, we identify double-traced lines by employing maximum weighted matching. This makes it possible to transform the problem of obtaining possible ECRs at odd-degree node to that at even-degree node. In the final, global phase, we find all the candidates of single-stroked paths by depth first search and select the best one by evaluating SLALOM smoothness. Experiments on static images converted from online data in the Unipen database show that our method achieves a restoration rate of 96.0 percent.

Algorithms↗
PubMed1992

Handwriting and spelling: dyslexic children's abilities compared with children of the same chronological age and younger children of the same spelling level.

Handwriting speed and spelling were examined in a group of 10-year-old dyslexic children compared with children of the same age and with younger children of the same spelling level. The children wrote lists of words onto a digitizer pad in three different condition: a dictation, copying from a sheet on the desk and copying from a wall chart. The words ranged in complexity from simple monosyllabic phoneme to grapheme words to words needing orthographic and morphological information and non-words. There were differences in writing speed between the 10-year-olds and 8-year-olds in most conditions. There were no significant differences in speed of writing or pausing between the dyslexic children and the 10-year-olds. There was a difference in the number of errors in the spelling of non-words, the dyslexic children being inferior to both the other groups. The only difference between the dyslexic children and the 8-year-olds was in speed of writing in copying from the desk and in writing complex words. The performance of the dyslexic group was more similar to that of the 8-year-olds in the dictation but to the 10-year-olds in the copying conditions. Independent judges had no difficulty in identifying the 10-year-olds' writing but confused that of the 8-year-olds with the dyslexic children's. It is proposed that the dyslexic children had automatised movement patterns linked to spelling equivalent to their same age peers but that these patterns were built on accumulated inaccuracies in both letter formation and spelling.

Achievement↗
PubMed2003

Parkinson's disease patients undershoot target size in handwriting and similar tasks.

OBJECTIVES: Previous research suggested that people with Parkinson's disease are able to increase handwriting stroke size up to 1.5 cm without an increase of stroke duration; whereas age matched individuals in normal health are able to modulate stroke size without changes in stroke duration for sizes up to 2 cm. This study was designed to test this finding by examining whether sizes larger than 1.5 cm show different relationships with stroke duration for patients with Parkinson's disease as compared with age matched controls. METHODS: The study included 13 subjects with Parkinson's disease and 13 age matched controls. Participants were required to write a cursive "llllllll" pattern, or a cursive "lililili" pattern without the dots, at a comfortable speed and also as fast as possible, in five different sizes (1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 3.0, and 5.0 cm). The participants wrote with a ballpoint pen on a digitiser tablet. The target pattern was displayed at its required size on a screen, but disappeared as soon as the pen touched the surface of the digitiser tablet. Online visual monitoring of the hand was prevented by a cover over the digitiser. After each trial, the recorded movement of the tip of the pen was displayed with two lines to indicate whether the size requirement had been met. The writing conditions were presented in random order and consisted of 12 trials for each participant. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that stroke size and duration produced by the participants with Parkinson's disease were independently modulated up to 1.5 cm; sizes over 1.5 cm resulted in progressive undershooting by patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). It was also shown that these participants modulated acceleration measures inefficiently as compared with controls. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that individuals with Parkinson's disease writing at speed produce inadequate stroke sizes when these should equal or exceed 1.5 cm.

Aged↗
PubMed2003

Kinematic analysis of handwriting movements in patients with Alzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment, depression and healthy subjects.

A variety of studies have demonstrated that motor disorders, parkinsonism and extrapyramidal motor symptoms (EPMS) are common in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Several studies have reported an association of EPMS with severity, progression and poor prognosis of AD. The majority of these studies used clinical assessments for the rating of EPMS. In this study, kinematic handwriting analysis was used to quantify differences in fine hand motor function in patients with probable AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI, as an assumed initial stage of AD) compared to depressed patients and healthy controls. Both patients with MCI and patients with probable AD exhibited loss of fine motor performance. Movements of AD patients were significantly less regular than those of healthy controls.

Aged↗
PubMed2004

Assistive technology and handwriting problems: what do occupational therapists recommend?

BACKGROUND: Handwriting difficulties for students are a common reason for referral to occupational therapy. Little research evidence is available concerning the factors guiding technology recommendations for these children. PURPOSE: The objective of this survey research was to describe the technology-related recommendations and factors involved in the decisions made by Canadian occupational therapists for these students. RESULTS: More therapists recommended the use of keyboard-based strategies (93%) than dictation-based strategies (72%). Experienced therapists were more likely to prescribe technology tools. Dictation to a scribe (93%) and desktop computers (89%) were the strategies most frequently recommended. Equipment cost and availability of funding, and the availability of support in the school for the student were the most influential factors, respectively, on the keyboard and dictation strategy type prescribed. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: The results confirmed that occupational therapists prescribe a range of technology solutions. Factors influencing these recommendations differ depending on the nature of the technology, the person, environment or occupation. Knowing the factors guiding occupational therapist technology recommendations will help provide valuable information about the practical implications of the available technologies.

Child↗
PubMed2001

Reputation and the legibility of doctors' handwriting in situ.

The consequences of failed communication can be as disastrous and doctors have a reputation for illegibility. Previous research supports this opinion but little work has been done to assess doctors' legibility in situ. Our study evaluates if doctors deserve their reputation and investigates how legibility is affected by the time taken to write. Sets of in-patient hospital notes were selected at random. The first written entry by a doctor and a nurse in the current admission were analysed. In addition to this, 10 doctors and 10 nurses, unaware of the true nature of the study, wrote out lists of words and the time taken to do the task was recorded. The doctors' handwriting was significantly less legible (p = 0.010) and they wrote significantly quicker (p = 0.005). However a small minority of the doctors was responsible for the majority of illegible words written by that group.

Handwriting↗
PubMed2002

Illegible handwriting in medical records.

In clinical records many items are handwritten and difficult to read. We examined clinical histories in a representative sample of case notes from a Spanish general hospital. Two independent observers assigned legibility scores, and a third adjudicated in case of disagreement. Defects of legibility such that the whole was unclear were present in 18 (15%) of 117 reports, and were particularly frequent in records from surgical departments. Through poor handwriting, much information in medical records is inaccessible to auditors, to researchers, and to other clinicians involved in the patient's care. If clinicians cannot be persuaded to write legibly, the solution must be an accelerated switch to computer-based systems.

Handwriting↗
PubMed1983

The Genain Quadruplets at age 51: report of handwriting assessment.

A set of monozygotic female quadruplets developed schizophrenia at age 26 and were treated at the National Institute of Mental Health for several years. Using graphic material of these unusual subjects, this study demonstrates how handwriting, statistically in graph forms, expresses the developmental stages before (at age 16), during the acute phase of the disease (age 26 to 28) and 25 yr. later (age 51) when they functioned outside a hospital setting in various degrees of competency.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Lateral differences for person perception: effects of task on visual processing of handwriting.

Sergent and Bindra suggested that identification of faces using few different stimuli engages mainly the left hemisphere and, conversely, that discrimination of faces using more stimuli engages mainly the right hemisphere. The present study examined whether this suggestion holds for the perception of handwriting which, like faces, authorizes the perception of "persons". Normal adults were presented stimuli consisting of a word written in various hands, laterally displayed for 180 msec. Exp. 1 (identification) was conducted with 8 subjects, who were asked to identify (push-button) four different stimuli by means of an associated first name. Exp. 2 (discrimination) was conducted with 16 subjects who were asked to make same/different judgments between a central stimulus and a lateral one under three experimental conditions, normal, mirror-reversed, and inverted presentations of both members of the pair. The results suggest that the direction of asymmetry depends more on the amount of stimuli than on the task and that familiarity with the stimuli is an important variable.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1993

Cervical spine surgery and handwriting: a case report.

The 53-year-old right-handed woman underwent decompressive laminectomies and foraminotomies at the C3-C7 levels. The course of illness and postoperative recovery were documented by handwriting and MRI views, but not statistical analysis.

Agraphia↗
PubMed2000

Perceptual anticipation in handwriting: the role of implicit motor competence.

In two experiments, perceptual anticipation--that is, the observer's ability to predict the course of dynamic visual events--in the case of handwriting traces was investigated. Observers were shown the dynamic display of the middle letter l excerpted from two cursive trigrams (lll or lln) handwritten by one individual. The experimental factor was the distribution of the velocity along the trace, which was controlled by a single parameter, beta. Only for one value of this parameter (beta = 2/3) did the display comply with the two-thirds power law, which describes how tangential velocity depends on curvature in writing movements. The task was to indicate the trigram from which the trace was excerpted--that is, to guess the letter that followed the specific instance of the l that had been displayed. In Experiment 1, the no answer option was available. Experiment 2 adopted a forced-choice response rule. Responses were never reinforced. When beta = 2/3, the rate of correct guesses was high (Experiment 1, P¿correct¿ = .69; Experiment 2, P¿correct¿ = .78). The probability of a correct answer decreased significantly for both smaller and larger values of beta, with wrong answers becoming predominant at the extremes of the range of variation of this parameter. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that perceptual anticipation of human movements involves comparing the perceptual stimulus with an internal dynamic representation of the ongoing event.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Relationship between visuomotor and handwriting skills of children in kindergarten.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the performance of children in kindergarten on the Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI) and their ability to copy letters legibly. METHOD: Sixty typically developing children in kindergarten aged 64 months to 75 months (30 girls and 30 boys) were administered the VMI and the Scale of Children's Readiness In PrinTing (SCRIPT). The SCRIPT requires children to copy 26 lower case letters and 8 upper case letters from a model. RESULTS: A significant relationship was found between subjects' performance on the VMI and ability to copy letters legibly. In addition, as subjects' ability to copy the forms on the VMI increased, a concomitant increase in ability to copy letters was also found. There were no gender differences in performance on the VMI or on the SCRIPT: CONCLUSION: The findings of this study suggest that most children in kindergarten similar to those in this study will be ready for handwriting instruction in the latter part of the kindergarten year.

Child↗