Speed of writing and printing

Abstract

In Experiment 1, subjects printed the alphabet faster than they wrote it. In Experiment 2, copying of familiar words was equally fast when written or printed (in lowercase). Printing in uppercase was slowest. For both writing and printing, performance was faster on the word task than on the alphabet task, the fastest speeds ranging from 2.01 to 2.58 letters/sec. In both experiments, most subjects expressed a preference for writing over printing on tasks outside the laboratory.The studies reported here were done to provide additional information about the writing speed of adult subjects. In a previous experiment (Newman & Nicholson, 1976), subjects were given three trials to write the alphabet as quickly as they could. The results showed that on the third trial, subjects were producing approximately 2 letters/sec. Similar rates have been reported by Provins and Cunliffe (1972), by Provins and Glencross (1968), and by Weber, Kelley, and Little (1972).In those three experiments, the task for the subjects was to write the alphabet, joining adjacent letters, as if writing a single 26-letter word. In the experiment by Newman and Nicholson (1976), however, subjects were allowed to choose whether they would write the alphabet, as in previous experiments, or print it. Half chose to do it each way, presumably selecting the type of response they believed to be faster. Examination of their performance indicated that there were no differences in speed between these two groups.In the present experiments, all subjects were given both writing and printing trials. This permitted both within-and between-subjects comparisons of response speed. This also made it possible to determine the relationship between the speeds for these types of responding.Different tasks were used in the two experiments. In Experiment 1, subjects printed the alphabet or wrote it as a single word, as in previous studies; in Experiment 2, subjects copied 20 familiar five-letter words as quickly as they could. The speed of printing in capital letters was also determined in Experiment 2. In each experiment, subjects were given three trials for each type of response. EXPERIMENT 1 MethodSubjects and Design. The subjects were 24 undergraduates I appreciate the help of Sandra Womack, who gathered the data in Experiment 1, and the comments of Michael Goodman. Requests for reprints should be sent to Slater E. Newman, Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina 27650. enrolled in an introductory psychology course at North Carolina State University. Subjects in Group PW were given the printing task ftrst and then the writing task, and those in Group WP were given the writing task first. Printing was done in lowercase. Data were analyzed only for subjects who produced all 26 letters in the correct order on each trial and (in the writing task) joined all adjacent letters.Procedure. Subjects were run individually. Each was given a lined sheet of paper and a ball-point pen and asked to write (or print) the alphabet legibly as fast ...

Handwriting performance in younger and older adults: Age, familiarity, and practice effects.

“…Alphabet copying. This task, commonly used in handwriting studies (e.g., Newman, 1980;Newman & Nicholson, 1976;Provins & Magliaro, 1989), consisted of writing the letters of the alphabet as though they formed a single word. The task was repeated over three consecutive timed trials.…”

“…The extent and magnitude of the influence that handwriting skill may have on age differences in cogntive performance are issues of considerable importance (Salthouse, 1993). Handwriting speed and, to a lesser extent, endurance have been measured through tasks such as alphabet, word, digit, and sentence copying (e.g., Meulenbroek & van Galen, 1989; Newman, 1980). Speed of performance is rarely assessed across multiple tasks in the same experiment.…”