Similarities among the shapes of writing and their effects on learning

Abstract

Writing systems are usually studied in terms of the level of language that they represent, with little attention to the shapes that are used to do so. Those shapes are not random or accidental, however. They tend to be similar to one another within a script. Many of the Latin letters have a roughly vertical stem or hasta with an appendage or coda to the right. This arrangement is more common than one with the coda on the left of the hasta. We present data to show that young children are generally better at copying and writing from memory shapes such as <b> and <F>, which have the typical arrangement with the coda on the right, than those such as <d> and <J>, which do not. The results suggest that children start to learn about the statistics of the letter shapes before they know how or that these shapes represent language.

Statistical Learning, Letter Reversals, and Reading

“…The first goal of the present study was to determine whether the finding of higher reversal rates for left-facing than right-facing letters (Fischer, 2010, 2011; Fischer & Tazouti, 2012; Simner, 1984; Treiman & Kessler, 2011) would replicate in a new sample of children that is not limited to typically developing children. Replication is important given that the existing studies suggesting differences across letters have some limitations.…”

“…Statistical learning principles have rarely been applied to the learning of letter shapes, but their applicability is suggested by the fact that, within a writing system, the shapes of symbols are not random or accidental. Rather, the shapes tend to share certain graphic properties (Treiman & Kessler, 2011; Watt, 1983). For example, most Hebrew letters are like 〈 〉 and 〈 〉 in having squarish shapes.…”

“…Supporting the idea that children implicitly learn about the typical graphic pattern, typically developing children of around 5 years of age who are asked to print such letters as d and j sometimes produce forms such as 〈b〉 and 〈 〉, respectively. Both left- and right-handed children appear to make more mirror-image reversals with left-facing letter forms such as these than with right-facing letters such as f and k (Fischer, 2010, 2011; Fischer & Tazouti, 2012; Simner, 1984; Treiman & Kessler, 2011). Children are rarely taught explicitly about the visual commonalities among the letter shapes, but these findings suggest that they pick them up implicitly.…”

“…Replication is important given that the existing studies suggesting differences across letters have some limitations. In most of the studies (see Treiman & Kessler, 2011, for an exception), researchers did not consider whether the elevated reversal rate for a left-facing letter such as j might reflect the fact that this letter is relatively uncommon in English rather than the letter’s orientation. In addition, the children in some previous studies (Fischer, 2010, 2011; Fischer & Tazouti, 2012) wrote only a subset of the reversible letters.…”

El lexicón como origen del carácter dinámico de los sistemas de escritura

“…Así, la emergencia de la estructura articulatoria de la expresión escrita vendría dada como fruto del desarrollo por parte de los usuarios de las capacidades para llevar a cabo un funcionamiento propiamente lingüístico de la misma en los procesos de lectura y escritura fluidas (skilled reading and writing) al adquirir procedimentalmente tales destrezas a partir del uso (cf. Deacon et al [2008] o Treiman y Kessler [2011]). …”