The impact of spelling regularity on handwriting production: A coupled fMRI and kinematics study

Abstract

Current models of writing assume that the orthographic processes involved in spelling retrieval and the motor processes involved in the control of the hand are independent. This view has been challenged by behavioral studies, which showed that the linguistic features of words impact motor execution during handwriting. We designed an experiment coupling functional magnetic resonance imaging and kinematic recordings during a writing to dictation task. Participants wrote orthographically regular and irregular words. The presence of an irregularity impacts both the initiation of the movement and its fine motor execution. At the brain level, the left inferior frontal and fusiform gyri, two regions belonging to the core of the written language system, were found to be sensitive to the presence of an irregularity and to its position in the word during writing execution. Moreover, the left superior parietal lobule, the left superior frontal gyrus and the right cerebellum, three motor-related regions, displayed a stronger response to irregular than regular words. These results constitute direct evidence that orthographic and motor processes occur in a continuous and interactive fashion during writing.

How Do Spelling, Handwriting Speed, and Handwriting Quality Develop During Primary School? Cross-Classified Growth Curve Analysis of Children's Writing Development

“…In the case of children with more automatised graphomotor abilities, as we assume was the case for children in Grade 3 at the start of the study (coh2), the impact of graphic complexity on handwriting speed was already present at the start of the study and remained stable over time (Grades 3-5). Interestingly, while handwriting speed has often been interpreted as a reflection of orthographic processes (Sumner et al, 2013;Kandel and Perret, 2015;Palmis et al, 2019), this study provides a novel finding regarding the effect of graphic complexity on speed.…”

“…Studies conducted in French have revealed that words' orthographic characteristics, especially regularity, influenced handwriting fluency in university students (Delattre et al, 2006) and in children from 8 to 10 years old (Kandel and Perret, 2015). The impact of orthographic complexity on handwriting execution has been demonstrated in adults by neuroimaging evidence (Palmis et al, 2019). The opposite direction of the relationship has also been investigated, revealing that the graphomotor demand was negatively related to grammatical spelling performance in French (Van Reybroeck and Hupet, 2009).…”

“…Van Galen (1991) reference theory of writing represented orthographic and graphomotor skills as separate processes, occurring one after the other in a discrete manner. Since then, studies have demonstrated that spelling and graphomotor processes have influenced each other during the course of writing, challenging this vision of independent processes (Kandel and Perret, 2015;Palmis et al, 2019;Gosse and Van Reybroeck, 2020). However, little is known about the concurrent development of transcription skills, and our understanding of how spelling and handwriting influence each other is limited (Caravolas et al, 2020).…”

The handwriting brain in middle childhood

“…Two motor areas (supplementary motor area (SMA), and the right precentral gyrus) were found to be preferentially activated for adults. The SMA is involved in movement control; its activation is reliably observed in writing tasks but its contribution is considered non‐specific (Palmis et al, 2019; Purcell, Napoliello, et al, 2011; Rapp & Dufor, 2011; Rapp et al, 2016). More generally, it is often mobilized in language production tasks (Longcamp et al, 2019).…”

On the tip of the pen: Effects of character-level lexical variables and handwriter-level individual differences on orthographic retrieval difficulties in Chinese handwriting

“…Neuroscientific evidence also suggests that atrophy in the grey matter in the left insula, which is directly implicated in phonological encoding, is also a cause of TOT in old people (Shafto et al, 2007; see also Maril et al, 2001, 2005, for different neuroscientific findings regarding TOT). In handwriting, people experience more spelling difficulties for words of lower spelling regularity and for words with a higher homophone density (Kandel & Perret, 2015; Palmis et al, 2019; Planton et al, 2019; R. Wang et al, 2020; C.…”