书写对阅读的影响——来自传统书写与电脑打字的证据

书写和阅读是在文字的基础上发展起来的, 二者存在共享的神经网络。书写能影响阅读, 阅读不仅依靠视觉加工, 还依赖书写运动表征。不同书写方式对阅读的影响不同, 传统书写对阅读有促进作用, 电脑打字对阅读产生了一定的消极影响。对汉字来说, 传统书写能加强汉字的正字法表征, 促进汉字阅读; 电脑打字对汉字阅读的影响尚无一致结论。未来研究可以考察传统书写与电脑打字神经机制的差异, 以及电脑打字对汉字认知加工的影响及神经机制。     

The influence of handedness on profile and line drawing directionality in children,young, and older normal adults

One hundred twenty-two normal subjects--children, young and older adults (77 right-handers and 45 left-handers)--performed two drawing tasks in order to study their directionality trends. The first task consisted of drawing the profile of a face and in the second task subjects had to link two points in order to draw a line. The analysis of the drawing directionality revealed a significant effect of the age when right-handers drew profiles whereas this effect reached significance in left-handed subjects only when drawing lines. Left- and right-handers' performances across the two tasks were found to significantly differ. Results are discussed in terms of hemispheric and environmental factors.     

The roles of handedness and stimulus asymmetry in aesthetic preference.

When some pictures are mirror reversed, aesthetic evaluations of them change dramatically. Stimulus features that may be important in contributing to this effect are: (a) location of areas of principal interest or weight in the picture space, (b) cues that suggest a direction of motion within the picture. Dextrals and inverted sinistrals preferred paintings with cues suggesting motion proceeding from left to right over their mirror-reversed versions and also preferred those with weight concentrated in the left portions of the picture space. The explanation that best fits these data is that preference is promoted when the picture content encourages attention to its rightmost portions, thus placing a majority of the picture in the left visual field where it is directly processed by the right hemisphere.     

On-court position and handedness in visual anticipation of stroke direction in tennis

ObjectivesIn racket sports, players integrate information picked up from their opponent's kinematics and contextual cues like on-court position into shot outcome anticipation. In view of suggested difficulties with anticipating left-handed opponents' action intentions, here we examined whether an opponent's handedness interacts with position-dependency in visual anticipation.Design and methodFollowing a 2 (Group) x 2 (Handedness) x 2 (Position) x 3 (Temporal Occlusion) factorial design, 20 tennis players and 20 non-players predicted directional outcome of temporally manipulated point-light animations of identical left- and right-handed forehand groundstrokes performed near vs. far from the court's midline.ResultsTennis players' response selection was mostly affected by an opponent's on-court position, particularly at an early stage of a hitting movement. Opponents' handedness affected response selection similarly in both groups (i.e., bias towards down-the-line predictions against left-handed strokes occluded at racket-ball-contact), but it did not interact with on-court position.ConclusionsFindings highlight that on-court position, and opponents' handedness to some extent as well, appears relevant for skilled visual anticipation in tennis.     

Early differentiation between drawing and writing in Chinese children

Children under 3½ years of age or so are often thought to produce the same types of scribbles for writing and drawing. We tested this idea by asking Chinese 2- to 6-year-olds to write and draw four targets. In Study 1, Chinese adults judged the status of the productions as writings or drawings. The adults performed significantly above the level expected by chance even with the productions of 2- to 2½-year-olds. In Study 2, we examined specific characteristics of the children’s writings and drawings. Although the younger children’s scribbles bore little resemblance to the correct characters, they tended to be smaller, sparser, and more angular than their artwork, with less filling in. Differences were also found in paper use and implement use. Children did not appear to distinguish writing from drawing for their own names before they did so for other targets.     

Gender differences in severity of writing and reading disabilities

Gender differences in mean level of reading and writing skills were examined in 122 children (80 boys and 42 girls) and 200 adults (115 fathers and 85 mothers) who showed behavioral markers of dyslexia in a family genetics study. Gender differences were found in writing and replicated prior results for typically developing children: Boys and men were more impaired in handwriting and composing than were girls and women, but men, who were more impaired in those writing skills, were also more impaired in spelling than women. Men were more impaired than women in accuracy and rate of reading passages orally, but boys were not more impaired than girls on any of the reading measures. Males were consistently more impaired than females in orthographic skills, which may be the source of gender differences in writing, but not motor skills. Population-based studies that report gender differences in reading in children with dyslexia may be confounding reading and writing disorders—the latter being the true source of gender differences in both children and adults with dyslexia.     

Induced movement-in-depth: relative location of static stimulus and direction asymmetry

A rotating spiral stimulus induced prolonged movement-in-depth in a static circle concentric with its origin. Both were coated in luminous paint and viewed monocularly in the dark. Analysis showed that (a) longer induced movement was observed in the circle when it was central than when it was peripheral to the inducing stimulus, and (b) induced movement was perceived longer when towards the subject than when away from the subject.     

Directed movements and the body-proportion effect in preschool children's human figure drawing

Drawing a human figure involves mastery over complex planning problems. The variant forms which young children produce may be an index of these. The most common variant is the “tadpole figure” with arms seemingly on the head. It is known that children who spontaneously draw this variant will attach arms correctly to the trunk of an incomplete pre-drawn figure if the head is small, but will attach them to the head if that exceeds the trunk in size. The present study shows that this body-proportion effect cannot be reliably modified by directing the pen to the head or trunk for the purpose of drawing body-parts other than arms; and that the arms are much more subject to the effect than the legs, nose, navel or ears. Experimental analysis of drawing based on completion-tasks can in principle help to bring out, and put under stimulus-control, performance characteristics which cannot reliably be inferred from post-hoc inspection of spontaneous finished products.     

Skull asymmetry and handedness in adults: a possibility of their association with lateral head turning in infancy

During the first two to three months after delivery infants when placed in the supine position commonly turn their heads laterally. This posture has been linked to the intrauterine orientation of the fetus. Skulls of adults were expected to bear a mark of this predominant head position in the form of occipital flattening. A blind examination of computerized axial tomography (CT) scans of 35 normal subjects assessed for handedness (20 right- and 15 mixed-handers) confirmed this prediction for the latter group only. Mixed-handers showed a slight, but reliable flattening of the right occiput. Also, there was a small but significant inverse association between the size of the petrous ridge and handedness. Examining subtle variations in skull shape of adults may provide a glimpse into some aspects of pre- and early postnatal development.     

Quality of drawing as a factor in the interpretation of figure drawings

Examined the drawings of 32 poliomyelitis patients and their matched controls to see whether figure drawings primarily reflect the subject's projection of psychological state, ability to draw, or some combination of these two factors. An overview of the literature is also given. Drawings from disabled and nondisabled subjects were reliably rated for quality, with no significant quality difference found between groups. Analyses of variance were then used to compare the drawings on several different measures of drawing size, completion and movement that might be assumed on the basis of the literature, to reflect the subjects' projection of disability status. Results showed that quality of drawing was a significant factor in 13 of the 17 comparisons while disability status proved to be a significant factor in only one of the 17 comparisons. There were no significant interactions. Therefore, the overall findings are consistent with the hypothesis that quality of drawing-rather than projective mechanisms-may at times be the overwhelming determinant of clinical and research findings with figure drawings.