Developmental aspects of handwriting acquisition

352 Pages·2012·3.97 MB·English

Developmental aspects of handwriting acquisition

Michael John Allen
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement of
Staffordshire University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Submitted March 2010

Resubmitted August 2011
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Acknowledgements
My thanks go to all that have helped during the past several years juggling a
busy professional workload with fascinating studying.
Thanks to Mary Gale and the staff at St Michaels School, Stone, Staffordshire;
the staff at Christchurch Middle School, Stone, Staffordshire; Linda Ball and
the staff at Alleynes School, Stone Staffordshire; Jo Farmer and the staff at
Parkside School, Stafford; and Beryl Whincup and the staff at Sir Graham
Balfour School, Stafford. Without their willingness to assist none of this
would have been possible.
Thanks to my supervisors, Mr David Galbraith, Professor David Clark-Carter
and Dr Mark Torrance (now at Nottingham Trent University) all of whom
patiently guided me through the more difficult times.
And finally to my wife Karen and daughters Vicki, Jacqui and Heather each of
whom has, at various times, given me the necessary encouragement to get
the work finished.
Declarations
I declare that, while registered as a candidate for a Research Degree, I have
not been a registered candidate or enrolled student for another award.
I declare that no material contained in the thesis has been used in any other
submission for an academic award.
I confirm that the thesis submitted is the outcome of the work that I have
undertaken during my programme of study and is all my own work.
MMMMJJJJ AAAAlllllllleeeennnn
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Abstract
This research set out to examine the changes in handwriting in children from
the earliest learning experiences at about five years old through to the time
that they leave education in late adolescence. The aims were to explore the
changes that occur in handwriting, both of features used and their variability,
to establish when they occur and to determine what the consequences are for
the process of individualisation.
A coding scheme was devised that was used to establish detailed changes in
feature use of particular letters in the handwriting of children. The scheme
was tested and then revised to give a practical tool to use in the examination
of large numbers of handwriting samples in cross-sectional and longitudinal
studies that followed.
In the cross-sectional study three handwriting tasks (normal composition,
neat copying and fast copying) were completed by 144 participants from six
different age groups. Firstly, the results showed that, there are underlying
higher order dimensions of handwriting that emerge from some of the
individual features. Secondly, across all tasks, the variability of handwriting
increased from the younger children and peaked at about 10-11 years old
and then decreased. Within this general trend, there was also evidence that
writing faster than normal led to increased variability in letter formation for
younger children, but reduced variability for older children. Thirdly, some
individualisation was present even in the youngest children, but the extent of
this increased such that by late adolescence it was nearly almost complete.
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In the longitudinal study handwriting samples from a smaller number of
children were obtained over three years. The findings were similar to those
obtained in the cross-sectional study.
The implications of this for handwriting acquisition in particular and skill
acquisition in general are considered.
The research concludes that there is potential to extend the approach used in
this research to clarify higher order dimensions of handwriting production,
that the variability of handwriting is a good measure for determining
handwriting development in children, that this variability increases up to the
age of 10-11, and then declines, and that the handwriting of each child
progressively develops its own style away from that of his or her peers.
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Contents
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
List of tables vii
List of figures viii

Chapter 1 Preface 1
1.1 General introduction 1
1.2 Preliminary considerations for the research 8
1.3 Background to handwriting production 12

Chapter 2 Introduction 16
2.1 General introduction 16
2.2 Precursors of handwriting 17
2.3 Skill acquisition 21
2.4 Models of writing 33
2.5 Models of handwriting 39
2.6 The development of handwriting in children 44
2.7 Movement in handwriting 50
2.8 External factors influencing handwriting production 58
2.9 The research questions 63

Chapter 3 Assessing handwriting 69
3.1 Assessing developmental aspects relating to handwriting in children 71
3.2 Handwriting variation 79
3.3 Forensic categorising of handwriting 86
3.4 Summary 98

Chapter 4 Coding scheme development 100
4.1 Introduction 100
4.2 The coding scheme 103
4.3 Method 112
4.4 Results 118
4.5 Discussion of cluster analysis 131
4.6 Coding scheme refinement 137
4.7 Inter-rater reliability 143
4.8 Discussion 146
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Chapter 5 Cross-sectional study 154
5.1 Introduction 154
5.2 Practical considerations 159
5.3 Pilot study 163
5.4 Method 165
5.5 Results – general observations 172
5.6 Results – Principal Components Analysis (PCA) 175
5.7 Results – individual handwriting features 187
5.8 Results – overall handwriting variation (OHV) 194
5.9 Results – individualisation of handwriting 203
5.10 Discussion 207

Chapter 6 Longitudinal study 216
6.1 Introduction 216
6.2 Method and participants 221
6.3 Results- general observations 225
6.4 Results – descriptive statistics and Principal Components Analysis 228
6.5 Results – overall handwriting variation (OHV) 238
6.6 Results -individualisation 243
6.7 Discussion 248

Chapter 7 Discussion 251
7.1 Introduction 251
7.2 Critique of methodology and coding scheme 254
7.3 Handwriting variation and skill development 263
7.4 The development of handwriting style and individualisation 270
7.5 Causes of change in handwriting style 275
7.6 Implications for teaching of handwriting 277
7.6 Conclusion 282

Bibliography 285
Appendices 302

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List of Tables
Table 3.1 showing categories into which the letter A can be divided 88
Table 3.2 showing capital letter features used by Hardcastle et al (1986) to
discriminate between adult writings 90
Table 3.3 showing lower case letter features used by Hardcastle &
Kemmenoe (1990) to discriminate between adult writings 94
Table 4.1 The coding scheme 110-111
Table 4.2 showing descriptive statistics of data in preliminary study of coding
scheme 119
Table 4.3 showing participant clustering and age group clustering patterns 128
Table 4.4 showing the inter-rater reliability of the seventeen retained features 145
Table 5.1 showing participants’ details for the cross sectional study 166
Table 5.2 Loadings on each of the components for the composing, neat and fast
writing tasks. 179
Table 5.3 showing the form of the features loading on components 1 and 2 182
Table 5.4 Median (and inter-quartile ranges) for feature use proportions 188-189
Table 5.5 Means and standard deviations for the overall handwriting variation
(OHV) scores for each task by year group. 197
Table 5.6 Overall handwriting variation (OHV) - the significance levels and
effect sizes of task for each year group 201
Table 5.7 OHV - showing the t values of task across pairs of tasks for the
different age groups 202
Table 5.8 showing number of Level One Clusters based on dendrograms 205
Table 5.9 the number of Perfect Triples shown by the dendrograms in
Appendices 4.1 to 4.6 (% of maximum of 24) 206
Table 6.1 Longitudinal study data showing median (inter-quartile) for use of
each coded feature 230
Table 6.2 Level One groupings based on the dendrograms in Appendices
5.1 to 5.4 in longitudinal study 246

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List of Figures
Figure 1.1a showing writing from a young child who is still learning to write 13
Figure 1.1b showing writing from a child showing mastery of the skill but whose
handwriting still has a child-like appearance 13
Figure 1.1c showing handwriting from a pupil in her mid-teenage years 13
Figures 3.1 – 3.16 Variations in letter forms 81-85
Figures 4.1a-4.1e showing dendrograms obtained using different clustering
algorithms 123-127
Figure 4.2 Extract from handwriting of participant nearest centroid value of
cluster 1 (youngest participants) 135
Figure 4.3 Extract from handwriting of participant nearest centroid value of
cluster 2 (oldest participants) 135
Figure 4.4 Extract from handwriting of an eleven year old clustering with oldest
children 136
Figure 4.5 Extract from handwriting of an eleven year old clustering with youngest
children 136
Figure 4.6 Dendrogram showing two main clusters using revised scheme 141
Figure 5.1 showing the picture prompt sheet giving ideas for Task 1 169
Figure 5.2 Texts of the two copying tasks 170
Figure 5.3 Mean scores on Lateral Elongation as a function of task and year 185
Figure 5.4 Mean scores on Movement Integration as a function of task and year. 187
Figure 5.5 showing the mean overall handwriting variation (OHV) across all
features and across all participants in each age group (Task 1=compose,
Task 2=neat copying and Task 3=fast copying) 198
Figure 6.1 showing handwriting from a 5 pupil 226
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Figure 6.2 showing handwriting from the same pupil as Figure 6.1 but in the
following academic year 227
Figure 6.3 showing the mean OHV data from the longitudinal study 232
Figure 6.4 Mean score on Movement Integration component as a function of age
changes within each of the age cohorts. 236
Figure 6.5 showing the mean OHV data from the longitudinal study 240
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Chapter 1 Preface
1.1 General introduction
The need to communicate in one form or another is central to the existence
of all human beings. Often this involves recording the communication, a
process that historically led to the development of handwriting.
For most people, the process that enabled them to acquire the skill of
handwriting is largely forgotten once it has been acquired. In children,
handwriting becomes an increasingly automated skill (Rueckriegel, et al.
2008), subservient to the higher thought processes that are to be recorded
using it. This does not mean that handwriting is outside conscious control. If
a high degree of automation does not happen, then the need to apply the
mind to the act of handwriting is likely to be a barrier to the higher thought
processes that are being communicated. For example, writing in
unaccustomed circumstances requires different neuro-muscular input (Wing,
2000). But in the normal course of events, accomplished writers concentrate
on what to write not how to write.
Handwriting is a skill the product of which is regarded as being unique to
each individual (Ellen, 1993). This uniqueness is derived from two
components of a person’s handwriting. Firstly, the particular combination of
forms of the letters used (style) to produce the handwriting will vary from
person to person depending on a number of factors. These are considered in
depth in Chapter 2. In this research, not only will letterforms be examined in
isolation and in combination but they will also be analysed with a view to
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determining whether there are higher order dimensions of handwriting that
some features share with one another.
Secondly, the variability of execution of the letterforms varies from one writer
to another. This variability is usually called natural variation and is an
intrinsic quality of handwriting. The origins of variability are often ignored in
studies which aim to show what events occur during development and when
they occur. However, in this research, variability will be at the heart of the
analysis of handwriting development because the variations are a potential
source for change in handwriting style within a given writer and hence the
source of differences between writers.
Thus, for a given written character (such as the letter a), two writers might
show variations some of which are shared by both writers and some of which
are not. Multiplied by the various handwritten characters and the population
of writers, there is scope for many dimensions of handwriting to be either
similar or different both within the handwriting of a given writer and between
the handwriting of different writers.
Indeed, the range of natural variation of a person’s handwriting itself
becomes a property of the handwriting that a handwriting expert can use
when determining authorship. The range of variation incorporates
dimensions of the extent of the variation and the nature of different
handwriting features used. Taking into account natural variation is a central
part of the identification process for the handwriting expert. The combination
of features used and their variability are what produce the unique quality
(style) of each person’s handwriting (Ellen, 1993).
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