From Hand to Eye With the Devil In-Between: Which Cognitive Mechanisms Underpin the Benefit From Handwriting Training When Learning Visual Graphs?

Tânia Fernandes,Susana Araújo

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.736507

Abstract

Cognitive science has recently shown a renewed interest on the benefit from training in handwriting (HW) when learning visual graphs, given that this learning experience improves more subsequent visual graph recognition than other forms of training. However, the underlying cognitive mechanism of this HW benefit has been elusive. Building on the 50 years of research on this topic, the present work outlines a theoretical approach to study this mechanism, specifying testable hypotheses that will allow distinguishing between confronting perspectives, i.e., symbolic accounts that hold that perceptual learning and visual analysis underpin the benefit from HW training vs. embodied sensorimotor accounts that argue for motoric representations as inner part of orthographic representations acquired via HW training. From the evidence critically revisited, we concluded that symbolic accounts are parsimonious and could better explain the benefit from HW training when learning visual graphs. The future challenge will be to put at test the detailed predictions presented here, so that the devil has no longer room in this equation.

Highlights

Literacy is an exquisite example of human ingenuity
Courrieu and de Falco, 1989; Mayer et al, 2020; Seyll et al, 2020) and in what regards the benefit from HW training when learning visual graphs, we propose that HW is a vehicle for optimizing perceptual learning of the new visual graphs
A large body of empirical evidence supports the advantage from HW training relative to control training in subsequent visual graph recognition (Araújo et al, 2021; for an overview, see, James, 2017; e.g., Williams, 1969; Longcamp et al, 2006, 2008; James, 2010; Bara and Gentaz, 2011; Guan et al, 2011; Suggate et al, 2016; Labat et al, 2020; Mayer et al, 2020; Seyll et al, 2020)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Literacy is an exquisite example of human ingenuity. Written scripts are composed by graphs, i.e., artificial two-dimensional geometric-like shapes (cf. Chang et al, 2018) that are arbitrary but, when learning to read, become visual counterparts of linguistic units as phonemes, syllables, or morphemes (e.g., letters in the Latin alphabet, kanas and kanjis in Japanese), and gears of written words (e.g., Pelli et al, 2003; Grainger, 2018). Most of the corroborating evidence is behavioral, and only a few studies have directly compared (nonmotor) visual analysis training with HW training (Williams, 1969, 1975; Koenigsberg, 1973; Courrieu and de Falco, 1989; Seyll et al, 2020) This theoretical account is coherent with eye-movement patterns showing strong inspection of the visual item before copying it (Maldarelli et al, 2015) and transient enhancement at the left vOT for graphs learned via HW, immediately after training (James, 2010; James and Engelhardt, 2012; Vinci-Booher et al, 2021). Mere visual exposure is not enough to elicit visual segmental analysis (e.g., Pick, 1965; Caldwell and Hall, 1969, Experiment 1; Williams, 1969; Tawney, 1972; Samuels, 1973; Spectorman et al, 1977)

DISCUSSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT