Learning through experience: an emergent connectionist account of letter production behaviour

Abstract

In handwriting, the drawing or copying of an individual letter involves a process of linearizing, whereby the form of the letter is broken down into a temporal sequence of strokes for production. In experienced writers, letters are produced consistently using the same production methods that are economic in terms of movement. This regularity permits a rule-based description of such production processes, which can be used in the teaching of handwriting skills. In this paper, the outstanding question from rule-based descriptions as to how consistent and stable letter production behaviour emerges as a product of practice and experience is addressed through the implementation of a connectionist model of sequential letter production. This model: (1) examines the emergence of letter production behaviour, namely the linearizing process; (2) explores how letters may be internally represented across both spatial and temporal dimensions; and (3) investigates the impact of learning certain letter production methods when generalizing to produce novel letterforms. In conclusion, the connectionist model offers an emergent account of letter production behaviour, which addresses the co-representation of spatial and temporal dimensions of letters, and the impact of learning experiences upon behaviour.