Learning Handwriting: Factors Affecting Pen-Movement Fluency in Beginning Writers

Abstract

Skilled handwriting of single letters is associated not only with a neat final product but also with fluent pen-movement, characterized by a smooth pen-tip velocity profile. Our study explored fluency when writing single letters in children who were just beginning to learn to handwrite, and the extent to which this was predicted by the children’s pen-control ability and by their letter knowledge. 176 Norwegian children formed letters by copying and from dictation (i.e., in response to hearing letter sounds). Performance on these tasks was assessed in terms of the counts of velocity inversions as the children produced sub-letter features that would be produced by competent handwriters as a single, smooth (ballistic) action. We found that there was considerable variation in these measures across writers, even when producing well-formed letters. Children also copied unfamiliar symbols, completed various pen-control tasks (drawing lines, circles, garlands, and figure eights), and tasks that assessed knowledge of letter sounds and shapes. After controlling for pen-control ability, pen-movement fluency was affected by letter knowledge (specifically children’s performance on a task that required selecting graphemes on the basis of their sound). This was the case when children retrieved letter forms from dictated letter sounds, but also when directly copying letters and, unexpectedly, when copying unfamiliar symbols. These findings suggest that familiarity with a letter affects movement fluency during letter production but may also point towards a more general ability to process new letter-like symbols in children with good letter knowledge.

Factors Influencing Handwriting Development among Preschool Children: A Systematic Review

“…Letter knowledge was assessed in terms of letter recognition, 16 and letter naming, [16][17][18] copying familiar letters, as well as unfamiliar symbols. 18 Letter recognition was influenced by handwriting fluency, 12,16,18 and name-writing, 17 in preschool children. Reutzel, et al, 18 found that letter-naming and letter-writing fluency were associated.…”

“…Therefore, it was concluded that a lack of letter knowledge causes disfluency in handwriting. 16 According to Gerde, et al, 17 the most important predictor of children's name writing was letter knowledge, specifically capital letters.…”

On the Need for Accurate Brushstroke Segmentation of Tablet-Acquired Kinematic and Pressure Data: The Case of Unconstrained Tracing

“…Few authors have presented approaches to segmenting brushstrokes [1,2,[14][15][16]. Spatial segmentation approaches have categorized strokes based on spatial features such as local minimum/maximal coordinates or have deconstructed characters into predefined components [14,16,17].…”

“…Few authors have presented approaches to segmenting brushstrokes [1,2,[14][15][16]. Spatial segmentation approaches have categorized strokes based on spatial features such as local minimum/maximal coordinates or have deconstructed characters into predefined components [14,16,17]. Fitjar et al [16] predefined the strokes needed to trace letters; for example, the letter "A" was decomposed into three lines (two slanted and one horizontal).…”

Children with handwriting difficulties: Impact of cognitive strategy training for acquisition of accurate alphabet-letter-writing

“…Handwriting involves a complex co-ordination of linguistic, perceptual, cognitive and motor abilities (Weintraub et al, 2009). Research on handwriting is continuing to determine the exact factors underpinning handwriting acquisition (Fitjar et al, 2021) and the most effective methods for supporting children to master this skill (Engel et al, 2018). Current research supports the contribution of occupational therapy handwriting programmes which emphasise gross and fine motor skills, visual-motor-integration and visual perception to handwriting development (Lee, 2022; Tse et al, 2019).…”