Visual-motor functional connectivity in preschool children emerges after handwriting experience

Vinci‐Booher, Sophia; James, Thomas W.; James, Karin H.

doi:10.1016/j.tine.2016.07.006

Cited by 47 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…These findings resonate with other evidence that visual production can support learning, including mainte-nance of recently learned information (Wammes et al, 2016) and enhanced recognition of novel symbols (Longcamp et al, 2008;James and Atwood, 2009;Li and James, 2016). Previous fMRI studies that have investigated the neural mechanisms underlying such learning have found enhanced activation in visual cortex when viewing previously practiced letters (James and Gauthier, 2006;James, 2017), and increased connectivity between visual and parietal regions following handwriting experience (Vinci-Booher et al, 2016). However, these studies have focused on univariate measures of BOLD signal amplitude within regions or when analyzing connectivity, raising the question of whether these changes reflect the recruitment of similar representations across tasks or of colocated but functionally distinct representations for each task.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Relating Visual Production and Recognition of Objects in Human Visual Cortex

et al. 2019

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Drawing is a powerful tool that can be used to convey rich perceptual information about objects in the world. What are the neural mechanisms that enable us to produce a recognizable drawing of an object, and how does this visual production experience influence how this object is represented in the brain? Here we evaluate the hypothesis that producing and recognizing an object recruit a shared neural representation, such that repeatedly drawing the object can enhance its perceptual discriminability in the brain. We scanned human participants (N ϭ 31; 11 male) using fMRI across three phases of a training study: during training, participants repeatedly drew two objects in an alternating sequence on an MR-compatible tablet; before and after training, they viewed these and two other control objects, allowing us to measure the neural representation of each object in visual cortex. We found that: (1) stimulus-evoked representations of objects in visual cortex are recruited during visually cued production of drawings of these objects, even throughout the period when the object cue is no longer present; (2) the object currently being drawn is prioritized in visual cortex during drawing production, while other repeatedly drawn objects are suppressed; and (3) patterns of connectivity between regions in occipital and parietal cortex supported enhanced decoding of the currently drawn object across the training phase, suggesting a potential neural substrate for learning how to transform perceptual representations into representational actions. Together, our study provides novel insight into the functional relationship between visual production and recognition in the brain.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Relating Visual Production and Recognition of Objects in Human Visual Cortex

et al. 2019

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“…Such enhanced transmission may reflect participants’ increasing ability to emphasize the diagnostic features of each object across repeated attempts to transform their perceptual representation of the object into an effective motor plan to draw it. More broadly, these findings sugges that the manner in which information is communicated between sensory and downstream regions may be a potential neural substrate for learning complex visually guided actions, including visual production (Vinci-Booher et al, 2016).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…These findings resonate with other evidence that visual production can support learning, including maintenance of recently learned information (Peynircioğlu, 1989; Wammes, Meade, & Fernandes, 2016) and enhanced recognition of novel symbols (Longcamp et al, 2008; James & Atwood, 2009; Li & James, 2016). Previous fMRI studies that have investigated the neural mechanisms underlying such learning have found enhanced activation in visual cortex when viewing previously practiced letters (James & Gauthier, 2006; James, 2017), and increased connectivity between visual and parietal regions following handwriting experience (Vinci-Booher, James, & James, 2016). However, these studies have focused on univariate measures of BOLD signal amplitude within regions or when analyzing connectivity, raising the question of whether these changes reflect the recruitment of similar representations across tasks or of co-located but functionally distinct representations for each task.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relating visual production and recognition of objects in human visual cortex

Fan

Wammes

Gunn

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Drawing is a powerful tool that can be used to convey rich perceptual information about objects in the world. What are the neural mechanisms that enable us to produce a recognizable drawing of an object, and how does this visual production experience influence how this object is represented in the brain? Here we evaluate the hypothesis that producing and recognizing an object recruit a shared neural representation, such that repeatedly drawing the object can enhance its perceptual discriminability in the brain. We scanned participants using fMRI across three phases of a training study: during training, participants repeatedly drew two objects in an alternating sequence on an MR-compatible tablet; before and after training, they viewed these and two other control objects, allowing us to measure the neural representation of each object in visual cortex. We found that: (1) stimulus-evoked representations of objects in visual cortex are recruited during visually cued production of drawings of these objects, even throughout the period when the object cue is no longer present; (2) the object currently being drawn is prioritized in visual cortex during drawing production, while other repeatedly drawn objects are suppressed; and (3) patterns of connectivity between regions in occipital and parietal cortex supported enhanced decoding of the currently drawn object across the training phase, suggesting a potential substrate for learning how to transform perceptual representations into representational actions. Taken together, our study provides novel insight into the functional relationship between visual production and recognition in the brain.Humans can produce simple line drawings that capture rich information about their perceptual experiences. 2However, the mechanisms that support this behavior are not well understood. Here we investigate how regions 3 in visual cortex participate in the recognition of an object and the production of a drawing of it. We find that 4 these regions carry diagnostic information about an object in a similar format both during recognition and 5 production, and that practice drawing an object enhances transmission of information about it to downstream 6 regions. Taken together, our study provides novel insight into the functional relationship between visual pro-7 duction and recognition in the brain. 8

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“…In this respect, handwriting and typing have fundamentally different properties (Mangen and Velay, 2010;Mangen and Balsvik, 2016): Handwriting requires carefully reproducing the shape of each letter, whereas in typewriting the motor program is not related to the letter shape and, as a result, no such grapho-motor component is present. Hence, motor programs associated with handwriting provide an additional informative memory trace and may contribute to the representation of the shape of a letter (James and Engelhardt, 2012;Vinci-Booher et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When novel letters were trained by handwriting, an activation in motor areas was observed, which was absent when these novel letters were trained by typing (James and Atwood, 2008;Longcamp et al, 2008). Furthermore, handwriting experience also seems to be necessary in children to develop the adult-like neuronal circuit of letter processing (James and Engelhardt, 2012) by increasing functionally connectivity between visual and motor brain regions (Vinci-Booher et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Literacy Training of Kindergarten Children With Pencil, Keyboard or Tablet Stylus: The Influence of the Writing Tool on Reading and Writing Performance at the Letter and Word Level

et al. 2020

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During the last years, digital writing devices are increasingly replacing handwriting with pencil and paper. As reading and writing skills are central for education, it is important to know, which writing tool is optimal for initial literacy education. The present training study was therefore set up to test the influence of the writing tool on the acquisition of literacy skills at the letter and word level with various tests in a large sample of kindergarten children (n = 147). Using closely matched letter learning games, children were trained with 16 letters by handwriting with a pencil on a sheet of paper, by writing with a stylus on a tablet computer, or by typing letters using a virtual keyboard on a tablet across 7 weeks. Training using a stylus on a touchscreen is an interesting comparison condition for traditional handwriting, because the slippery surface of a touchscreen has lower friction than paper and thus increases difficulty of motor control. Before training, immediately after training and four to five weeks after training, we assessed reading and writing performance using standardized tests. We also assessed visuo-spatial skills before and after training, in order to test, whether the different training regimens affected cognitive domains other than written language. Children of the pencil group showed superior performance in letter recognition and improved visuo-spatial skills compared with keyboard training. The performance of the stylus group did not differ significantly neither from the keyboard nor from the pencil group. Keyboard training, however, resulted in superior performance in word writing and reading compared with handwriting training with a stylus on the tablet, but not compared with the pencil group. Our results suggest that handwriting with pencil fosters acquisition of letter knowledge and improves visuo-spatial skills compared with keyboarding. At least given the current technological state, writing with a stylus on a touchscreen seems to be the least

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Visual-motor functional connectivity in preschool children emerges after handwriting experience

Cited by 47 publications

References 57 publications

Relating Visual Production and Recognition of Objects in Human Visual Cortex

Relating Visual Production and Recognition of Objects in Human Visual Cortex

Relating visual production and recognition of objects in human visual cortex

Literacy Training of Kindergarten Children With Pencil, Keyboard or Tablet Stylus: The Influence of the Writing Tool on Reading and Writing Performance at the Letter and Word Level

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