Vers une levée du mystère des écritures en miroir (des chiffres) chez l’enfant

Fischer, Jean Paul

doi:10.4074/s0003503310002034

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…But the latter condition is not always satisfied. For example, direct observation shows that children often begin the drawing of the digit 1 at the bottom (Fischer, 2010). This can explain why the digit 1 is often reversed: children who begin the drawing at the bottom and then apply the right-writing rule, will reverse the digit 1.…”

Section: General Discussion and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studies on the written characters orientation and its influence on digit reversal by children

Fischer

2017

Educational Psychology

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Recent research has found that children reverse mainly the leftoriented characters when writing from memory (e.g. they write ɩ and ε instead of J and 3). In order to obtain an objective definition of the left-orientation of a character, the ratings of the level of leftorientation of all the asymmetrical capital letters and digits by 142 adult students was analysed in Study 1. Study 2, on 298 five-sixyear-old children, examined an immediate prediction of Study 1, namely that the children reverse mainly the digits that the adult students have rated left-oriented. Other predictions, both of the posited representation of the writing during the reversal stage and the neurological process of mirror generalisation, were verified: the simplicity of the representation of the symmetrical digits 0 and 8 makes incorrect writings very rare; the mirror generalisation, which operates only in the left-right direction, makes other transformations (inversion or 180° rotation) very rare. Finally, the explanatory power of some putative individual factors of reversal (e.g. writing with the left hand) is shown to be far lower than that of the left-orientation of the characters. A short historical backgroundReversal of characters -letters and digits (for digits see Figure 1) -in the writing of the typical developing child is a phenomenon know at least since the beginning of the twentieth century. This is testified by Fuller (1916) who, speaking on mirror writing, of which left-right reversal of the characters is a component, wrote that 'nearly every child at a certain period of its development will be found to produce spontaneous, fragmentary mirror-writing with the right hand' (p. 201). However, the fact that neuropsychologists and developmental psychologists have thought having a 'good' explanation of the phenomenon -the left-handedness of the children -has restricted the spreading of this information (incompatible with the good explanation) and prevented the emergence of another explanation. On the contrary, the paper by Fischer and Koch (2016a), in questioning and even rejecting the explanation by hand of writing, encourages the exploration of another explanation. Such other explanation was already suggested by Simner (1984) who remarked that children 'reverse the left-facing letters more often than the right-facing letters' (p. 141).

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Section: General Discussion and Conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studies on the written characters orientation and its influence on digit reversal by children

Fischer

2017

Educational Psychology

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“…The following paragraphs focus on four main recent empirical findings that are consistent with these neuropsychological findings and comprehensively disprove the old theories. Tables 1 and 2 show reversal percentages-calculated with respect to the total number of correct and reversed productions-for writings of digits and capital letters, as recorded during a series of studies in the same laboratory [33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. In the case of the digits, these studies involved a total of 1563 children.…”

Section: Recent Empirical Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children

Fischer

Luxembourger

2018

Education Sciences

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Reversing characters (digits and letters) when writing, and complete mirror writing, raise one of the oldest and most mysterious questions in developmental and educational psychology: Why do five-year-old children write symbols (e.g., ∃ for E) they have neither learnt nor seen? Attempts to draw up a complete explanatory theory of character reversal in writings by typically developing children were long hindered by the existence of a seemingly satisfactory explanation (left-hand writing), the failure to bring together research in neuropsychology and educational psychology, and the failure to consider the shape and structure of the characters. The present paper remedies this situation by describing a new, comprehensive theory based on recent neuropsychological findings and extensive empirical observations. The theory assumes that a character's orientation, detected in the early visual processing area, is deleted (or made inaccessible) by the mirror generalization process during transfer to memory. Consequently, there is a period, usually around age five, during which children have representations of the characters' shapes but not their orientations. Hence, when asked to write a character, children have to improvise its orientation, and the orientation they choose (implicitly, non-consciously) is often derived from the writing direction in their culture. Introduction: Historical BackgroundCharacter reversal, which results in left-right reversed characters (letters and digits) that appear normal when read in a mirror, is a major component of mirror writing. In the scientific literature, it was first described in 1878 by Buchwald, who reported several cases of character reversal in writing by patients with brain lesions and by healthy individuals, most notably children, nearly all of whom wrote with their left hand [1]. This pioneering study launched a new field of research and triggered numerous reports of mirror writing by both pathological and non-pathological individuals. Less felicitously, Buchwald's implicit suggestion that mirror writing was restricted to people who wrote with their left hand, whether naturally or deliberately, would cloud research for over a century.Erlenmeyer immediately included Buchwald's paper in his book on "Writing", quoting at length the paragraph describing children who mirror wrote with their left hand, but, when alerted to the incorrectness of their writing, wrote correctly with their right hand [2]. Furthermore, by suggesting "abductive left-hand writing" (linkshändige Abductionsschrift in German) as a more appropriate name for "mirror writing", Erlenmeyer reduced mirror writing to a mechanistic result of writing with the left hand: Characters and words are reversed when an individual writes abductively (outwards from the body midline) with the left hand.

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“…Our Experiment 2 examined complete mirror writing in children via a standardized protocol derived by simplifying and slightly modifying the procedure described by Cornell. Because 5- to 6-year-olds frequently mirror write many of the asymmetrical digits and some capital letters (Fischer, 2010a, Fischer, 2010b), we were able to address our second research question by studying the correlation between mirror writing in a name-writing task and mirror writing in a character-writing task.…”

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confidence: 99%

Unraveling the mystery of mirror writing in typically developing children.

Fischer¹,

Tazouti²

2012

Journal of Educational Psychology

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Most studies of mirror writing have focused on specific populations (e.g., pathological cases) or conditions (e.g., right-handed individuals writing with their left hand); hence, many simple questions about mirror writing in typically developing 5-year-old children remain unanswered. The present study addresses 2 simple but important issues conceming the relation between (a) mirror copying single characters (digits and capital letters) and mirror writing the same characters from memory and (b) mirror writing single characters and mirror writing whole words (e.g., 1st name). To shed light on these issues, the authors carried out 3 experimental studies of children at écoles matemelles in France. The results offer new insights into the phenomenon of mirror writing. A copying task generated considerably fewer mirror writings than a writing-from-memory task, and there was a significant but weak correlation (r^ = .22) between single-character mirror writing and name mirror writing. Academic level correlated positively with the mirror writing of characters (rj = .15); however, it correlated more positively with correct writing (r^ = .32) and negatively with no (or other incorrect) writing (r^ = -.45). This suggests that the mirror writings may occur (depending on the context) between some other incorrect writings (or absence of writing) and correct writings in the development of almost all children. In addition, contextual or situational factors, such as the preceding writing or the position of the writing on the page, had a much stronger infiuence on mirror writing than individual factors, such as writing hand or gender. German articles on mirror writing. However, in recent decades, mirror writing has been discussed only spasmodically (Ellis, 1988), and most research has focused on pathological cases, specific populations, left-handed persons, or children with leaming disabilities. Consequently, many simple but fundamental issues about the normal development of mirror writing remain unresolved, including the relationships between tnirror copying single characters (digits and capital letters) and mirror writing the same characters from memory and between mirror writing single characters and mirror writing whole words (e.g., first name). The The authors thank M.-B. Parisot, an experienced primary school teacher who served as second judge in the coding of the writings of Experiments la and 2, and O. Bartlett, A. Breton, C. Martignon, and M. Traore, who tested the children and coded the writings in Experiment lb. We are also grateful to the participating children, parents, teachers, directors, educational advisers, and education inspectors for their cooperation.

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Vers une levée du mystère des écritures en miroir (des chiffres) chez l’enfant

Cited by 8 publications

References 13 publications

Studies on the written characters orientation and its influence on digit reversal by children

Studies on the written characters orientation and its influence on digit reversal by children

A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children

Unraveling the mystery of mirror writing in typically developing children.

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