For a psycholinguistic model of handwriting production: Testing the syllable-bigram controversy.

Abstract

This study examined the theoretical controversy on the impact of syllables and bigrams in handwriting production. French children and adults wrote words on a digitizer so that we could collect data on the local, online processing of handwriting production. The words differed in the position of the lowest frequency bigram. In one condition, it coincided with the word's syllable boundary. In the other condition, it was located before the syllable boundary. The results yielded higher movement durations at the position where the low-frequency bigram coincided with the syllable boundary compared to where the low-frequency bigram appeared before the syllable boundary. Syllable-oriented strategies failed with the presence of a very low-frequency bigram within the initial syllable. Further analysis showed that children in grades 3 and 4 privileged syllable-oriented programming strategies. The production times of children in grade 4 were also affected by syllable frequency and, to a lesser extent, bigram frequency. The adults writing durations were modulated by bigram frequency. Therefore, both bigrams and syllables regulate handwriting production although the influence of bigrams was stronger in adults than children. In the light of these results, we propose a psycholinguistic model of handwriting production.

Typing is writing: Linguistic properties modulate typing execution

“…IKIs were longer at syllable boundaries than within syllables, replicating previous reports in typing (Gentner et al, 1988;Nottbusch, Grimm, Weingarten, & Will, 2005;Will et al, 2006) and handwriting (Kandel et al, 2011). Given that transitions between hierarchical levels take SE standard error, CI confidence interval Fig.…”

“…3 Correlations of by-participant random slopes (in IKI analysis) for word frequency, consistency, and bigram frequency with participants' typing speed longer than transitions within the same level (Rosenbaum, Kenny, & Derr, 1983), we would argue that syllables constitute such a level of processing in typing between words and keystrokes and could perhaps be implemented in the context of a graphemic buffer (Hillis & Caramazza, 1989). This would be in line with theories of spelling (Kandel et al, 2011;Rapp et al, 2002), challenging Logan and Crump's (2011) two-level hierarchical organization. Finally, syllable consistency had an inhibitory effect on IKIs -IKIs were longer for consistent than for inconsistent syllables -especially so in slower typists.…”

“…word frequency) and sublexical (e.g., sound-spelling consistency) variables on handwriting latencies across multiple task settings (Bonin, Chalard, Méot, & Fayol, 2002;Bonin, et al, 2015;Bonin, Peereman, & Fayol, 2001;Delattre, Bonin, & Barry, 2006; although see Roux, McKeeff, Grosjacques, Afonso, & Kandel, 2013). However, lexical and sublexical factors also affect whole word durations (lexicality in Roux et al, 2013;regularity in Delattre et al, 2006) and finer measures of response execution (inter-letter intervals and stroke durations; e.g., bigram frequency in Afonso, Álvarez, & Kandel, 2015;Kandel, Peereman, Grosjacques, & Fayol, 2011;Roux et al, 2013). While spelling models are well suited to account for the effects on response selection, they are not sufficiently specified in order to account for the effects on response execution.…”

Effects of grapheme-to-phoneme probability on writing durations

“…In handwriting theory, central processes have been considered to embrace those processes related to the retrieval and activation of an orthographic representation, whereas peripheral processes are concerned with the regulation of parameters of the motor response, such as amplitude, orientation, or force. The anticipatory vision of handwriting proposed by Van Galen and defended by other authors (Kandel, Peereman, Grosjacques, & Fayol, 2011;Van Galen, 1991) states that manipulations at the central levels of processing produce differences in writing durations corresponding to previous segments of the to-be-written sequence. This is because Van Galen's model proposes that central processes and peripheral processes are engaged in parallel, but with central processes dealing with forthcoming parts of the response.…”

Tracking the time course of lexical access in orthographic production: An event-related potential study of word frequency effects in written picture naming

“…According to a common view (e.g., Bonin, Chalard, Meot, & Fayol, 2002;Bonin & Fayol, 2000;Caramazza & Hillis, 1990;Chen & Cherng, 2013;Kandel, Peereman, Grosjacques, & Fayol, 2011;Rapp, Benzing, & Caramazza, 1997;van Galen, 1991), spoken and written language production are carried out via shared higher-level cognitive processing, e.g., conceptual retrieval and lexical access. A number of studies have provided preliminary evidence to support this view (see Bonin & Fayol, 2000;Bonin, Chalard, Meot, & Fayol, 2002 for behavioral studies; Brownsett & Wise, 2010 for neuroimaging evidence; for an electrophysiological study).…”