Summary: A new study focuses on how children learn to write. Quantifying pen movements revealed a process of learning distinct temporal patterns of movement that differentiate a set of features for each symbol.
Source: Kobe University.
How do we learn to write? Associate Professor NONAKA Tetsushi (Kobe University Graduate School of Human Development and Environment) looked at the development of writing skills in Japanese first-grade students learning the hiragana script. By quantifying their pen movements, he revealed the process of learning distinct temporal patterns of movement in such a way to differentiate a set of subtle features of each symbol. These aspects of handwriting development have been largely neglected in research carried out in Latin alphabet communities. The findings were published on June 13 in Developmental Psychobiology.
Previous research based on the Latin alphabet explains the acquisition of writing skills during childhood as a combination of two processes: the acquisition of visual representations and the development of fine motor skills to produce the desired trajectory of the pen. This study looked at the development of movement dynamics of handwriting in 1st graders at the Kobe University Elementary School who learned to write hiragana, a phonetic script used for Japanese. He examined how their movements were influenced by the social norms of the classroom environment in which those 1st graders participated over the first three months of the primary school.
During the study, the children were repeatedly encouraged to pay attention to the specific requirements for writing each character, including stroke endings, stroke order and rhythm of movement. While he observed individual variation in handwriting development among six students studying in the same classroom, two common trends were quantitatively demonstrated. Firstly, the pen movements became clearly differentiated for each type of stroke ending (stop, sweep or jump). Secondly, a consistent temporal structure of movement gradually emerged for each stroke.
This demonstrates that the process of handwriting development as explained by Latin alphabet-based research – acquiring fine motor skills in hands, plus storing the shapes in the head – cannot fully explain the handwriting skill development process for hiragana script. At least in this particular language community, learning the temporal pattern of movement corresponding to a letter seems highly important, based on which the invariant features of a letter—the traces of the specific temporal pattern of movement—can be discriminated as such.
The study also suggests that the process of learning to write by differentiating physical movements may be linked to a phenomenon specific to Chinese character-based cultures known as “air writing”, when people unconsciously move their fingers while trying to recall a certain character.
Source: Kobe University
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is adapted from the Kobe University news release.
Original Research: Full open access research for “Cultural entrainment of motor skill development: Learning to write hiragana in Japanese primary school” by Tetsushi Nonaka in Developmental Psychobiology.. Published online June 13 2017 doi:10.1002/dev.21536
[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]Kobe University “Writing in Rhythm.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 5 July 2017.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/rhythm-writing-learning-7025/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]Kobe University (2017, July 5). Writing in Rhythm. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved July 5, 2017 from https://neurosciencenews.com/rhythm-writing-learning-7025/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]Kobe University “Writing in Rhythm.” https://neurosciencenews.com/rhythm-writing-learning-7025/ (accessed July 5, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]
Abstract
Cultural entrainment of motor skill development: Learning to write hiragana in Japanese primary school
The aim of the present study was to examine how the social norms shared in a classroom environment influence the development of movement dynamics of handwriting of children who participate in the environment. To look into this issue, the following aspects of the entire period of classroom learning of hiragana letters in Japanese 1st graders who had just entered primary school were studied: First, the structure of classroom events and the specific types of interaction and learning within such environment were described. Second, in the experiment involving 6-year-old children who participated in the class, writing movements of children and their changes over the period of hiragana education were analyzed for each stroke composing letters. It was found that writing movement of children became differentiated in a manner specific to the different types of stroke endings, to which children were systematically encouraged to attend in the classroom. The results provide a detailed description of the process of how dynamics of fine motor movement of children is modulated by the social norms of a populated, classroom environment in a non-Latin alphabet writing system.
“Cultural entrainment of motor skill development: Learning to write hiragana in Japanese primary school” by Tetsushi Nonaka in Developmental Psychobiology.. Published online June 13 2017 doi:10.1002/dev.21536
