The acquisition of coordination: Preliminary analysis of learning to write

Abstract

The acquisition of coordination in handwriting was studied by comparing aspects of the limb dynamics in dominant and nondominant limbs, and having subjects learn to write their signature and produce repetitive cursive e's with their nondominant arm. Analysis of the motion of the limb links revealed that naturally right-handed subjects using their nondominant limb locked their distal limb joints and tended to write with the more proximal joints in contrast to the organization displayed by the dominant limb. Left-handed subjects did not demonstrate differences in phase-locking between the dominant and the nondominant limb. In contrast, they showed high correlations in the proximal linkages for both dominant and nondominant limbs. The findings revealed strong differences in limb organization between naturally dominantright- and left-handed subjects but these respective styles of coordination were transferred to nondominant limb writing. Overall, the findings provide some evidence towards Bernstein's (1967) intuitions regarding the mastery of biomechanical degrees of freedom, but suggest that coordination is strongly influenced by a variety of sources of constraint, including past experience. In addition, the results indicate that there may be directional trends to the acquisition of coordination similar to those observed in the development of fundamental movement patterns.