Visual–motor symbol production facilitates letter recognition in young children

Abstract

Previous research has suggested that handwriting letters may be an important exerciser to facilitate early letter understanding. Experimental studies to date, however, have not investigated whether this effect is general to any visual–motor experience or specific to handwriting letters. In the present work, we addressed this issue by testing letter knowledge using three measures in preschool children before and after a school-based intervention. Participants were divided into four training groups (letter-writing, digit-writing, letter-viewing, digit-viewing) that either wrote letters or digits or viewed letters or digits, twice a week for 6 weeks. We hypothesized that the visual–motor experience of handwriting letters or digits would improve letter knowledge more than viewing experience and that this effect would not be specific to training with letters. Our results demonstrated that the writing groups improved in letter recognition—one component of letter knowledge—significantly more than the viewing groups. The letter-writing group did not improve significantly more than the digit-writing group. These results suggest that visual–motor practice with any symbol could lead to increases in letter recognition. We interpret this novel finding as suggesting that any handwriting will increase letter recognition in part because it facilitates gains in visual–motor coordination.