Specifying the graphic characteristics of words that influence children's handwriting

Research about the development of the graphomotor side of writing is very scarce. The goal of this study was to gain a better understanding of what constitutes graphic complexity of written material by determining the impact of graphic characteristics on handwriting production. In this end, the pen stroke of cursive handwriting was precisely described through an algorithm of detection of seven graphic characteristics: the number of angles, turn backs, curves in X and Y, pen-ups and modified links. Twenty typically developing children in grade 2 completed a single-word dictation task, composed of 48 items, on a digital writing tablet. All 48 words were regular words, highly frequent for second graders, and varied in terms of their graphic structure. Their handwriting production for each word was assessed in terms of both legibility and speed. A general linear mixed model was run to determine the impact of each graphic characteristic on handwriting performance. In agreement with our hypothesis, the results showed that words have different levels of graphic complexity. The following characteristics, in order of importance, significantly influenced negatively handwriting legibility: modified links, angles, curves, pen-ups and length. Regarding speed, the angles were the only characteristic that made children slow down while handwriting. These findings represent novelty in the field of research on writing. Unlike the usual approaches, it focused on investigating the graphic complexity at the word-level. It offers for the first time a universal classification of the graphic characteristics of words and it enables the quantification of the graphic complexity of words.