Letter Size Research Articles

Script Struggles: A Psycholinguistic Study of Handwriting Difficulties among EFL Learners

This study seeks to examine the salient manifestations of handwriting difficulties experienced by learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), throwing light on the cognitive, neural, and educational aspects of handwriting. Qualitative and quantitative research designs were adopted to provide a comprehensive understanding of the manifestations of handwriting difficulties among EFL learners. In total, 80 college-level EFL students aged between18 to 22 years were included in this study. To investigate the specific manifestations of handwriting difficulties faced by the EFL learner population, data were gathered using a handwriting task given to all participants. The results of this investigation showed that the participants performed less than optimally in key handwriting features, including letter size consistency, legibility, word spacing, letter spacing, letter shape, left margin, and writing speed. Based on the findings, the study concluded with proposed interventions and instructional strategies to enhance the legibility and fluency of EFL learners' handwriting.

How to see the South African black people in Santu Mofokeng’s image-text archive?

South African artist Santu Mofokeng’s The Black Photo Album—Look at Me: 1890–1950 (1997) displays black people’s photographic portraits and text through a slide projection. For this archive project, he collected, restored, and re-contextualized the old portraits and added text. The presented figures depict the black South Africans who lived at the end of the nineteenth century. Most of them are well-dressed and take a pose in a European studio. Different from the well-prepared photographic representation, pieces of text include a disorder of alphabets, varied size of letters, inconsistent ground color, and misprinting effect. In a sense, the ambivalent mode of images and text seems to appeal the black people’s inner conflicts between being modernized versus colonized. In fact, Mofokeng once said that such a middle-class of black people did not exist in his education. Thus, this research analyzes the ways in which intertextuality of images and text in The Black Photo Album fills with the incomplete part of South African history. Reconsidering the functional limits of the TRC(Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1995) in South Africa, this research argues that Mofokeng’s archive project delivers emotions of memories of the black people, which were not registered in the nation’s history.

Legibility of Sans-Serif Typeface on Different Paper Grades Made from Invasive Alien Plant Species

Invasive alien plant species (IAPS) may cause threats to native biodiversity in ecosystems. Researchers have been investigating all the possible ways that they can be used effectively for other purposes. Since IAPS are capable of forming cellulose fibre nets, in this research, papers were made from three different types of IAPS (Japanese knotweed, giant goldenrod, and black locust). This research examined these IAPS papers and their effectiveness when used as printing substrates. In comparison to commercial office paper, the differences in basic, surface, optical, and microscopic properties were measured. As a widely used technology, inkjet printing was applied. We tested a commonly used sans-serif typeface (which has been established as being more legible than other typefaces in previous research) in three different type sizes (i.e., 8, 10, and 12 pt). According to the results, paper made from IAPS could offer some usable properties and acceptable legibility, especially when printing typefaces with specific attributes, such as moderate counter size, higher x-height, and minimal differences in the letter stroke width, are used. An appropriate typographic tonal density should be achieved in combination with an adequate letter size, e.g., 10 pt type size when a sans-serif typeface is used.

Effects of Letter Size and Luminance on the Legibility of Variable Message Sign Under Foggy Weather Conditions

Effects of Letter Size and Luminance on the Legibility of Variable Message Sign Under Foggy Weather Conditions

READERS’ PERCEPTION ABOUT THE ANDISHA SCIENTIFIC MAGAZINE OF HERAT UNIVERSITY OF AFGHANISTAN

Information and communication revolution has brought radical changes in the life style of users. Print media has broken the geographical barriers and also have become more so common with them. During the last few decades, the educational world has begun to appreciate the enormous potential of information and communication technology, which influences our future lives. Improved communication and information access is related to social and economic development. Print media provides an opportunity to bridge the gap between information rich and information poor. Audience research beside the media research is one of the stages which the study was undertaken, under this stage the data were collected from a sample of 80 subscribers from Herat University campus, using personal interview method with the help of well-structured pre-tested interview schedule. The study revealed that most of the readers rated the magazine as moderately effective. Ease in reading, attractiveness of the title and design of the cover page, among cover page components; readability, accuracy, clarity, usefulness, relevancy and adequacy of information among content components and letter size and number of pages per article and magazine among format components received the highest perception score.

ONOMOTOPEIA AS A MEANS OF EXPRESSIVENESS IN A GRAPHIC NOVEL: SOME NUANCES OF TRANSLATION

The article is devoted to onomatopoeia as a means of expressiveness in a graphic novel, to be precise, to the peculiarities of the translation of onomatopoeic words from French into Ukrainian. The purpose of the study is to find out the characteristic traits of onomatopoeia in a graphic novel and analyze its translation strategies, compiling a mini-dictionary of onomatopoeias (language pair French — Ukrainian). In the course of the research, it was found that the graphic novel relies on a purely visual and textual component. It is the visual accompaniment of colors, text and drawing style that helps to understand how to perceive onomatopoeia in context. Such an artistic tool as a speech bubble is also responsible for conveying the meaning of onomatopoeia, so the shape, size, and style of letters must be taken into account during interpretation. When working on the translation of onomatopoeia in graphic novels, it is necessary to rely on general linguistic knowledge, analyzing the type of onomatopoeia by origin (human sounds, animal sounds, nature sounds, sounds of objects) and the meaning of formative onomatopes for a more effective selection of analogues. At the same time, the process of translation is primarily a creative process, so it is impossible to offer a specific model of work on the text. Having studied the ways of translating onomatopoeia in a number of comics about Tintin (Hergé) and in “Persepolis” (Marjan Satrapi), we came to the conclusion that the translators used the following strategies: transcription / transliteration; partial adaptation (replacement of one or two letters); complete replacement of the onomatopoeic word with a word specific to the Ukrainian language; full replacement of the word with partial replacement of the meaning; replacing the onomatopoeia with the root of the corresponding verb. Common in translation practice is the addition and removal of certain elements (onomatopoeia included), which is generally not approved, but is not a drawback provided that the author’s intention is followed. Often the translator has to combine strategies to achieve an accurate and expressive result.

Labelling of intravenous drug delivery devices in critically ill patients: A scoping review.

Labelling is a strategy that contributes to the correct and faster identification of drugs, minimizing misidentification. There is a gap in knowledge on optimal labelling standards for intravenous (IV) devices applied to the care of critically ill patients. The goal of this article was to map existing knowledge on the labelling of IV drug delivery devices in critically ill patients for the prevention of medication errors. This was a scoping review conducted according to the JBI methodology in the LILACS, MEDLINE, CINAHL, IBECS, Scopus, Embase and Web of Science databases, and on the websites of specialized institutions. Searches were conducted up to December 2022 for scientific articles and grey literature that addressed the labelling of IV devices in intensive care units, emergency departments, and anaesthesia units. The data were collected using a structured form and were later classified, summarized, and aggregated to map the knowledge related to the review question. Twenty-one documents were included, which demonstrated variability in label use with IV drug delivery devices. The following features of structure and design stood out: printed format, colour coding, letter size differentiation, and the use of sturdy material. In terms of information, the name of the drug, dose, date and time of preparation, identification of the patient, and who prepared it were found. The identified patterns contributed to the reduction of drug misidentification and the development of timelier drug labelling and administration. The evidence supports the development of standardized labels for the prevention of medication errors.

Intensive training programme improves handwriting in a community cohort of people with Parkinson’s disease

BackgroundPeople with Parkinson’s disease (PwP) often report problems with their handwriting before they receive a formal diagnosis. Many PwP suffer from deteriorating handwriting throughout their illness, which has detrimental effects on many aspects of their quality of life.AimsTo assess a 6-week online training programme aimed at improving handwriting of PwP.MethodsHandwriting samples from a community-based cohort of PwP (n = 48) were analysed using systematic detection of writing problems (SOS-PD) by two independent raters, before and after a 6-week remotely monitored physiotherapy-led training programme. Inter-rater variability on multiple measures of handwriting quality was analysed. The handwriting data was analysed using pre-/post-design in the same individuals. Multiple aspects of the handwriting samples were assessed, including writing fluency, transitions between letters, regularity in letter size, word spacing, and straightness of lines.ResultsAnalysis of inter-rater reliability showed high agreement for total handwriting scores and letter size, as well as speed and legibility scores, whereas there were mixed levels of inter-rater reliability for other handwriting measures. Overall handwriting quality (p = 0.001) and legibility (p = 0.009) significantly improved, while letter size (p = 0.012), fluency (p = 0.001), regularity of letter size (p = 0.009), and straightness of lines (p = 0.036) were also enhanced.ConclusionsThe results of this study show that this 6-week intensive remotely-monitored physiotherapy-led handwriting programme improved handwriting in PwP. This is the first study of its kind to use this tool remotely, and it demonstrated that the SOS-PD is reliable for measuring handwriting in PwP.

Revealing the influence of bias in a letter acuity identification task: A noisy template model

In clinical testing of visual acuity, it is often assumed that performance reflects sensory abilities and observers do not exhibit strong biases for or against specific letters, but this assumption has not been extensively tested. We re-analyzed single-letter identification data as a function of letter size, spanning the resolution threshold, for 10 Sloan letters at central and paracentral visual field locations. Individual observers showed consistent letter biases across letter sizes. Preferred letters were named much more often and others less often than expected (group averages ranged from 4% to 20% across letters, where the unbiased rate was 10%). In the framework of signal detection theory, we devised a noisy template model to distinguish biases from differences in sensitivity. When bias varied across letter templates the model fitted very well - much better than when sensitivity varied without bias. The best model combined both, having substantial biases and small variations in sensitivity across letters. The over- and under-calling decreased at larger letter sizes, but this was well-predicted by template responses that had the same additive bias for all letter sizes: with stronger inputs (larger letters) there was less opportunity for bias to influence which template gave the biggest response. The neural basis for such letter bias is not known, but a plausible candidate is the letter-recognition machinery of the left temporal lobe. Future work could assess whether such biases affect clinical measures of visual performance. Our analyses so far suggest very small effects in most settings.

Localized neuropathic pain.

Localized neuropathic pain (LNP) is of peripheral origin and is characterized by circumscribed areas of pain with abnormal skin sensitivity or spontaneous symptoms that are characteristic of neuropathic pain, e.g., burning pain. It should be noted that LNP is confined to a specific area no larger than a letter size sheet of paper. LNP accounts for 60 % of neuropathic pain syndromes. There is no single etiology of LNP. The diagnostic approach is similar to that for other neuropathic pain conditions. General diagnostic tools are used to assess clinical features. So far, there are no specific guidelines for the management of LNP; for this reason, guidelines for general neuropathic pain are used. Topical treatments are included as part of second-line strategies in the Canadian Pain Society guidelines. Despite the lack of guidelines, 5 % lidocaine patches and 8 % capsaicin patches have been proven effective in LNP models.

Cultural adaptation of the iSupport online training and support programme for caregivers of people with dementia in Castilla y León, Spain.

E-learning has shown to be an effective intervention in helping informal caregivers of people living with dementia. It has the potential to reach people living in remote areas, increasing service coverage. As a response to the demographic context in Spain associated with a higher percentage of ageing, depopulation, and the complexities of health service delivery in rural areas, this paper describes the cultural adaptation and co-design of the iSupport online training and support programme for Castilla y León, Spain, as a potential e-health intervention to mitigate these constraints. The translation and cultural adaptation were performed following the WHO guidelines, with some adaptation due to the cultural context of Spain. Three focus groups were conducted with informal caregivers, health professionals, and a group of experts on cognitive impairment and dementia. The co-design process was performed as a Patient and Public Involvement activity with three groups consisting of people living with dementia, informal caregivers, rural population and experts on technology and dementia. A total of 435 suggestions were proposed for adaptation associated with erroneous terminology, rewording text/writing, grammatical or punctuation marks errors, and repeated information or need for additional content. Several recommendations were exposed during the co-design process: preference for interactive material such as videos or images, a forum to receive feedback from health care professionals and to leave satisfaction comments, availability in multiple platforms (e.g., tablet, laptop, mobile), slide format for information presentation, and availability to edit letter size and background colours. A culturally adapted version of the iSupport was developed for Castilla y León, Spain. The need for modification of words and expressions, information links to local resources websites, adjustments of characters' names and caregivers' scenarios, and additional content to some sections were recommended. Suggestions for the design should be taken into account for further adapted versions and platform developments.

Development of Pancasila Educational Teaching Materials and Environment Based Citizenship Wetland

This study aims to determine the validity, effectiveness and practicality of teaching materials on Pancasila Education and Citizenship on the subject of Archipelagic Insight based on wetlands. The research was conducted at Sungai Tabuk 1 Public High School, Banjar Regency, South Kalimantan for the 2021/2022 academic year. This research is a development research using the Tessmer model. Data collection was carried out by means of questionnaires, interviews and observations. Data analysis was carried out in a quantitative descriptive manner. The results of this study indicate that the teaching materials for Pancasila Education and Archipelagic Citizenship Based on Wetland Environment are declared valid. This is based on the results of expert reviews on the suitability of the material, the composition of the material, the consistency of writing, the display of photos/images, the display of tables, the shape and size of letters, conformity with the writing of Indonesian language rules, and suitability of the images with the material. Teaching materials are also stated to be practical to use. This is known from the results of individual trials and small group trials. Some of the things asked for by students' opinions were about the ease of understanding the content of the material, clarity in understanding instructions in doing group assignments, and clarity in understanding individual assignments. In addition, teaching materials are also declared effective. This is known from field or large-scale trials conducted on intact classes. From the results of the effectiveness test of teaching materials, it is known that they are in the good and very good categories.

Analisis keterampilan menulis tegak bersambung pada peserta didik kelas II SDN Tunggulsari 1 Kota Surakarta

<p class="Abstract"><em>The purpose of this research is to analyze the cursive writing skills of second grade students. This research applies qualitative method of research and a case analysis methodological approach. The subjects of this research is a teacher and 14 students. The cursive writing skills of second grade students at SDN Tunggulsari 1 Surakarta are the topic of this research. In this research, cursive writing skills were evaluated using eight indicators: form, letter size, distance, slope, alignment, neatness, completion of letters, use of capital letters, and use of punctuation marks. The primary data of this research obtained through interviews with homeroom teacher, second grade students and obtained by observation. The secondary data used by researcher was the study of documents and documentation. The techniques in collecting data were observation, interviews, and the study of documents. The researcher applied source triangulation to validate the data. The Miles and Huberman model analytic procedures were used in this research. The results revealed that the cursive writing skills of second grade students remained deficient. The results of the research of cursive writing abilities based on eight indicators revealed that only five students are classified as sufficient, while the remaining nine students are classified as deficient.</em></p><p class="Abstract"><strong>Kata kunci:</strong> <em>second grade students, elementary school, cursive, cursive writing skill.</em> </p>

Examining the Degree of Conformity of media formats and artistic aspects of Roshd Nojavan Magazine with the Needs of Students

Background and Aim: This research aimed to investigate the degree of adaptation of media formats and artistic aspects of Roshd Nojavan magazine to the media needs and interests of first-year high school students. Methods: This study is exploratory research in which a qualitative method (content analysis) and a survey (survey of students) were used. The sample in the qualitative part included nine issues of Roshd Nojavan Magazine published during the three years of 2020, 2021, and 2022, and the quantitative was 708 high school students. The research tools were content Checklist forms and semi-structured questionnaires. The reliability of the checklist forms and the questionnaire were 0.8 and 0.7 respectively. To analyze the data, coding of the texts with an inductive approach was used in the qualitative part, and descriptive statistics, one-sample chi-square test, and the Freidman test were used in the quantitative part. Results: In general, the results show that in terms of media formats, the magazine, in the formats of articles, entertainment, humor, and comic strips and headlines were completely in accord with the needs of students, in the formats of reports and notes, there was relative compliance, but in the format of interviews, the performance of the magazine was weak far from students’ expectation. Conclusion: From the artistic and aesthetic aspects of the magazine, the three indicators: letter size, the visualization of the magazine, and the color of the photos, do not fully comply with the needs and interests of the students, and adaptation of the students' need with the size of the photos is average.

The Graphological ,Typographical and Orthographical Devices in the poetry of e e Cummings

Critics were not always on the American poet Edward Estlin Cummings’ side and mostly he was a target to their invective criticism .The reason is that the style of this poet is inventive and eccentric to such an extent that it makes his poems difficult for the reader unfamiliar with his style. The invented a new style by which he transforms the traditional language to a means to express his feelings and ideas into a visual art . He works with great freedom on the shapes and sizes of letters and their distribution on page , the words and their syntactic function and also on grammatical rules and punctuation to make the influence he desires . There is a strong connection between form and content in the poetry of Cummings. The poet draws with words and letters to present a visual image and this makes it impossible to read his poetry aloud .

WAYFINDING DESIGN IN LONG-TERM-CARE COMMUNITIES: EVALUATION OF COMPLEXITY

Abstract Wayfinding, the ability to find one’s way, is a significant problem for many older adults; especially those with cognitive impairment. Long term care communities (LTCC) are often fraught with challenges for wayfinding. Those who cannot find their way are at risk for decreased engagement and loss of independence. A critical need is to assess architectural and design features that promote effective wayfinding in an objective way. This study describes the results of a wayfinding design evaluation of 12 LTCC (4 Assisted living; 2 Independent Living; and 6 mixed residency). We measured space syntax axial integration (SSAI; a measure of the visual connectedness) and a Revised Wayfinding Checklist. The results showed low integration values in all communities, ranging from an R3 of 1.43-2.03, indicating low connectedness (and increased wayfinding complexity). The Checklist score totals ranged from 23 – 34 (M = 27.45) out of a possible total of 17 – 51. Results showed that the buildings were overall complex, all had long corridors (>100 feet), over half used multiple elevators to get to common areas; and over 60% had complex, multi-building layouts. Design wise, visibly accessible restrooms were not present; over half of the LTCC had insufficient lighting; and signage color/contrast and letter size was less than recommended. All sites had few directional signs at decision points. Thus, the review of these LTCC showed that most buildings were very complex, with low connectedness, and had room to improve design features like signage and lighting to support wayfinding ability for the residents.

Changes in Pen Pressure, Letter Size, and Writing Speed According to Visual Cues in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Purpose: Writing performance can be improved in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) by providing the visual cues. This study aimed to investigate the changes in pen pressure, letter size, and writing speed as per levels of visual cues.Methods: Sixty-three participants (38 PD patients and 25 normal adults) performed tasks, including sentence writing along visual cue levels using a tablet personal computer, digital pen, and software that could measure the pen pressure, stroke length, and duration.Results: First, the PD group’s pen pressure and letter size were improved when the visual cue was provided. Second, the effect of visual cues was shown more in the performance of ‘writing within square blanks’ than in the performance of ‘copying’ and ‘writing between parallel lines’. Especially, there were no significant differences between the groups in terms of the letter size in ‘writing within square blanks’.Conclusion: Despite movement disorders in PD patients, our findings suggest that pen pressure and letter size can be improved when the patients are provided visual cues. Our results indicate that providing visual cues hierarchically and objectively confirms changes in writing performance.

Multimodality and cross-modal cohesion in manga

Manga with their distinct style and symbolism represent a growing reading trend in the world. Manga use an established set of symbols to convey various emotions. Manga have generally been more experimental in layout than Western comics. They are more fragmentary and contain more panels that enhance the dynamism of the story. We aimed to outline methodological approaches to the analysis of manga; to summarize specific features of manga as a separate medium; to analyse how multimodal cohesion is created in manga; to reveal various types of relations between visual and verbal modes. Manga is a multimodal discourse, combining several modes, mainly visual and verbal. The aural mode is represented by linguistic and visual signs, e.g. jagged borders of a speech bubble or the size and boldness of letters. We applied methods originally designed for the film analysis to the analysis of manga, in particular, Tseng’s (2013) theory of cross-modal cohesion, based on tracking cross-modally realized characters, objects, actions, and settings. This analysis included building cross-modal cohesive chains. We argue that it is possible to track cross-modal cohesion in manga, based on the interaction of visual, verbal, and aural components of identity chains. Besides, the interaction between visual and verbal modes was revealed by analysing text-image relations. In this paper we have outlined manga-specific features, distinctive features of manga’s page layout, cinematic devices, which manga borrowed from films, some of which may be used as focalisation-marking devices.

Predicting the effects of defocus blur on contrast sensitivity with a model-based metric of retinal image quality.

We measure the effect of defocus blur on contrast sensitivity with Sloan letters in the 0.75-2.00 arc min range of letter gaps. We compare our results with the prediction of the Dalimier and Dainty model [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A25, 2078 (2008)JOAOD60740-323210.1364/JOSAA.25.002078] and propose a new metric of retinal image quality that we define as the model limit for very small letters. The contrast sensitivity is measured for computationally blurred Sloan letters (0, 0.25, and 0.50 diopters for a 3 mm pupil) of different sizes (20/40 to 20/15 visual acuity), and subjects look through a small (2 mm) diaphragm to limit the impact of their own aberration on measurements. Measurements and model predictions, which are normalized by the blur-free condition, weakly depend on letter size and are in good agreement with our metric of retinal image quality. Our metric relates two approaches of modeling visual performance: complete modeling of the optotype classification task and calculation of retinal image quality with a descriptive metric.

Training peripheral vision to read: Using stimulus exposure and identity priming.

Reading in the periphery can be improved with perceptual learning. A conventional training paradigm involves repeated practice on a character-based task (e.g., recognizing random letters/words). While the training is effective, the hours of strenuous effort required from the trainees makes it difficult to implement the training in low-vision patients. Here, we developed a training paradigm utilizing stimulus exposure and identity priming to minimize training effort and improve training accessibility while maintaining the active engagement of observers through a stimulus visibility task. Twenty-one normally sighted young adults were randomly assigned to three groups: a control group, a with-repetition training group, and a without-repetition training group. All observers received a pre-test and a post-test scheduled 1 week apart. Each test consisted of measurements of reading speed, visual-span profile, the spatial extent of crowding, and isolated-letter profiles at 10° eccentricity in the lower visual field. Training consists of five daily sessions (a total of 7,150 trials) of viewing trigram stimuli (strings of three letters) with identity priming (prior knowledge of target letter identity). The with-repetition group was given the option to replay each stimulus (averaged 0.4 times). In comparison to the control group, both training groups showed significant improvements in all four performance measures. Stimulus replay did not yield a measurable benefit on learning. Learning transferred to various untrained tasks and conditions, such as the reading task and untrained letter size. Reduction in crowding was the main basis of the training-related improvement in reading. We also found that the learning can be partially retained for a minimum of 3 months and that complete retention is attainable with additional monthly training. Our findings suggest that conventional training task that requires recognizing random letters or words is dispensable for improving peripheral reading. Utilizing stimulus exposure and identity priming accompanied by a stimulus visibility task, our novel training procedure offers effective intervention, simple implementation, capability for remote and self-administration, and an easy translation into low-vision reading rehabilitation.