If you want something done right, should you write it yourself?

Primary Investigator: Katie Beuerlein

Supervising Instructor: David W. Pittman, Ph.D.

Although you may be taking it for granted even as you read this text, the ability to read

is truly an amazing thing. While it isn’t terribly outlandish to suspect the existence of brain

regions whose jobs are to recognize letters, group them into words, and subsequently string

those words together to derive meaning, this task becomes much more impressive when

considering the vast variety of text that our brains are capable of interpreting. Writing can exist

in multiple styles in myriads of fonts in countless sizes made up of various letters with scores of

possible orientations. While that diversity is astounding, how likely is it that the brain can

interpret all of these versions of writing with the same ease and retain the content of the

written material equally?

Strengthened connections of neuronal pathways within task-specific brain areas have

been found to contribute to an increase in skill level as a task becomes more familiar (Rioult-

Pedotti, 1998). Therefore, it is possible that people display an enhanced reading ability for

styles of writing with which they have the most experience. In today’s world, many people

spend a great amount of time reading typed text. However, this style seems to fall short for

optimal processing in comparison to handwritten text. It has already been well-

established that writing material to be learned by hand engages deeper processing

methods that allow for improved conceptual recall in comparison to typing

(Mueller et al, 2014). While it is less well-established as to whether this superiority

of handwritten material extends beyond mere initial processing during the act of

writing to provide benefits associated with rereading that material, there has been some

evidence of enhanced memory of information when it is associated with more embellishing

visual features (Bateman et al, 2010). Because handwriting is subject to human error and is

therefore less uniform in presentation than computerized text, it is possible that the unique

nature of handwritten text may allow for improved memory of the written material.

However, all handwriting styles may not be equal. Because a person typically has far

more experience reading one’s own handwriting than that of another person, it might be

expected that enhanced processing networks have developed for the specific style in which

they write. This study focuses on the distinction between origins of handwriting and

investigates the role of handwriting style in information processing. In other words, is there an

advantage in efficiency and retention of information when reading one’s own handwriting

compared to someone else’s? This question is targeted in the following experiment by

presenting a person with three distinct paragraphs, each written in either the person’s own

handwriting, someone else’s printed handwriting, or someone else’s cursive handwriting.

Saccadic eye movements during reading and memory of read material are used as two means

of assessing processing and comprehension of writing in these various styles.

Saccadic eye movements or “saccades” are the jerky eye movements employed when

reading that allow for the fixation of an image on the fovea of

the retina—the area of the back of the eye with the most

visual receptors and therefore with the greatest visual acuity

(and yes, these saccades are occurring while you read this

text). Frequency of saccades serves as an indicator of reading skill, as it has been found that the

number of saccades used per word decreases as children improve their reading ability (Rayner,

1986). From this evidence, it can be gathered that familiarity with the act of reading leads to a

greater efficiency in that the eyes must readjust fewer times to process the same quantity of

text. It is hypothesized that by extension of this “practice makes perfect” philosophy and the

fact that a person will in general have far more experience reading their own handwriting as

opposed to that of another person, fewer saccades will be produced when rereading words

written by one’s own hand. In addition, it is also predicted that recognition of information from

text read in one’s own handwriting, a common indicator of the extent of information processing

occurring, will be more accurate relative to recognition of information from text read in

another person’s handwriting, again due to increased experience with processing one’s own

handwriting.

This study utilized 18 college students as participants that ranged in age from 18-22

years old. Given their identical educational statuses, the students were assumed to be of at

least comparable reading skill and similar in experience with rereading their own handwriting.

Additionally, all participants identified their own handwriting to be less neat than typed text,

confirming that it is less uniform than what would be seen on a computer screen. To prepare

for experimental testing, participants were given electronic copies of three paragraphs, each

extracted from the middle of randomly selected novels and distinct in subject matter (see

Passage Origins section for citations). Participants were asked to rewrite all three of these

passages in their own natural handwriting, even though only one would later be randomly

selected for utilization in the testing phase. This was meant to generate a handwritten

paragraph to be used as a sample during testing, meanwhile giving each person equivalent

experience with all the passages to be presented, thereby equalizing the information processing

that accompanies the act of physically writing information. The number of words per line (10)

and the number of lines per paragraph (10 full lines plus one extra as “throw away” to complete

the thought of the paragraph) were kept consistent so that collected eye-movement data

would be comparable both within paragraphs and among participants. This task of handwriting

paragraphs was completed by every participant three days prior to his or her actual

experimental testing session to prevent memory of content, thereby further ensuring that

effects seen in this study are dependent solely on reading the passages and disentangled from

the effects of hand-writing them.

Each passage written by the participants was photographed to transform the

paragraphs to a digital format. For each participant, one of his or her handwritten paragraphs

was randomly selected to appear as a slide in the PowerPoint to be presented during the

testing session. Each participant was also randomly assigned a stock photo of each of the two

remaining paragraphs (one in print and one in cursive) written by third parties whose

handwriting the participants had no prior experience reading. The ultimate product of this

process was that each participant was presented during the testing session with a custom

PowerPoint featuring photos of each of the three passages they had written prior—one in the

participant’s handwriting, one in printed handwriting, and one in cursive handwriting—pasted

to separate slides. Both passage and writing style order were assigned randomly to avoid any

effect of presentation sequence. All photos of paragraphs were fit to separate slides in a way

that made all written text of similar size on the computer screen so that saccade measurements

would be comparable. Examples of pictures of paragraphs are displayed below to illustrate the

types of writing styles used, the passage content, and the text format (from left to right:

Passage 1 in stock printed handwriting, Passage 2 in stock cursive handwriting, and Passage 3 in

participant’s natural handwriting).

During the testing session, electrodes were placed on the forehead and

temples of the participant as shown to monitor horizontal eye movement

via changes in electric potential. All participants were instructed to sit with

their heads 12 inches away from the computer screen and read each

paragraph presented in the slideshow aloud, without stopping mid-

paragraph or moving their heads, effectively forcing the participants to rely only on eye-

movements to scan the lines. Saccadic eye movements were recorded during this time using

BIOPAC software. Brief intermissions were taken between paragraph presentations to allow the

participants to refocus before progressing to the next in sequence. Following completion of the

recordings, the number of forward and reverse saccades used per line were counted for each

paragraph and organized by writing style to reflect the word span of each fixation and how

many times the participant had to backtrack to refixate on words. Increased numbers for either

measurement were taken to be suggestive of less efficient reading.

Following measurements of eye movements, the participants did a short distraction

exercise on cognitivefun.net to introduce a time delay and prevent rehearsal of the read

material before completing a questionnaire asking them to identify words they recognized from

the paragraphs they had just read during the saccade recording phase. They were asked to

circle these words in a list of 50 that featured 10 words from each of the three paragraphs and

20 distractors. The number of correctly identified words from each paragraph were recorded

and grouped by handwriting style of the passage in which they appeared.

A repeated-measures ANOVA performed on the data collected from this experiment

showed that there was a significant effect of handwriting style on the average number of

forward saccades used to read a line of text (F(2, 34) = 22.885, p < .001). The number of forward

saccades per line were significantly greater for paragraphs written in cursive than the other

styles, but no differences were found between print and natural handwriting (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Forward saccades per line grouped by handwriting style of the text. Asterisk denotes a significant difference in saccades used for cursive handwriting compared to the two other styles.

A similar trend was identified when examining reverse saccades, as there was also a

significant effect of handwriting style on this measure (F(2,34) = 14.809, p < .001). Likewise,

participants enlisted significantly more reverse saccades to read cursive than they did to read

either print or their own handwriting, with no difference between the latter two (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Reverse saccades per line grouped by handwriting style of the text. Asterisk denotes a significant difference in saccades used for cursive handwriting compared to the two other styles. Standard error bars represent one standard error above and below the mean.

These two findings of increased saccadic eye movements in both the forward and

reverse directions for only cursive handwriting have important implications regarding the

efficiency of reading various handwriting styles. One potential explanation for these

observations is that there is no true impact of handwriting style on saccades, and the ability to

read reasonably legible handwriting is unaffected by its origin. This idea is supported by the fact

that all participants in this study ranked their comfort with cursive below that of their comfort

with printed handwriting, and, although some participants reported that they had received

education in cursive at some point in their prior schooling while some did not, there was no

difference in cursive saccades between those that were and were not formally instructed in

writing and reading this style. Because of the similarity in performance of people who never

received instructive exposure to cursive and those that had, it is possible that cursive

handwriting is still simply too foreign to all the participants used in this study to be considered

comparable in legibility. In this case, the readability of text is the determinant of saccadic eye

movements rather than the origin of the writing style, making the equivalencies in natural and

print saccades similar simply because they were both sufficiently legible samples.

Another possible interpretation of these results is that the number of saccades used

may be a function of similarities and differences between the presented handwriting styles. It

important to note that while all participants were given freedom to write their passages in

either cursive or printed handwriting, every participant chose to write in print. The lack of

difference observed between another person’s printed handwriting and one’s natural

handwriting could therefore simply be a result of more profound similarity between the two

because they fall under the same general category. As previously mentioned, the number of

saccades used per line of text tends to decrease with increased experience with reading

(Rayner 1986), leading to the expectation that exposure to one’s own handwriting allows for

increased efficiency in reading it alone. However, it is possible that the intrinsic similarities

between the print and natural handwriting style each participant chose to employ in this study

may have allowed for extrapolation of this enhanced reading ability to the print sample. In

contrast, cursive handwriting may have been too pointedly distinct from the participant’s own

handwriting for likewise generalization of an enhanced efficiency for those samples. An

additional experiment in which multiple samples of print handwriting are presented may

therefore be useful in distinguishing between these two proposed explanations for increased

cursive saccadic eye-movements, where no differences in saccades among all print samples

would suggest the former legibility-based explanation whereas a difference in saccades

between print styles more dissimilar in appearance to a person’s natural handwriting but

sufficiently legible would suggest the latter similarity-based explanation.

In addition to an effect of handwriting style, there was also an effect of line number on

forward saccades (F(9,153) = 3.675, p < .001). An increase in forward saccades seemed to occur

when participants reached the sixth line of each paragraph, which was found to employ a

significantly greater number of forward saccades than the tenth line (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Number of forward saccades by paragraph line. A greater number of forward saccades are associated with reading the sixth line than the tenth line of each paragraph. Standard error bars represent one standard error above and below the mean.

Although only the sixth and tenth lines were statistically significantly different, the data

alludes to a trend of slight elevation in forward saccades as participants read the sixth, seventh,

and eighth lines of each passage. This trend could be potentially attributed to attentional

processes. It is possible that attention is decreasing as one progresses to the halfway point of

each paragraph, as saccades tend to be less frequent when attentional processes are reduced

(Uzzaman and Joordens, 2011). The sudden increase could therefore represent participants

attempting to refocus on the text, thereby causing the observed increase in saccades.

However, upon examination of the physical composition of passages, a more likely explanation

is that lines six through eight of one of the three passages used featured longer, more complex

words than other lines and thus resulted in lines that extended further across the page. This

difference in the one paragraph may have boosted the average number of saccades required

for those lines, thus producing the effect seen above. This hypothesis is echoed by the lack of

an interaction between handwriting style and line number of the paragraph for number of

saccades in both the forward and reverse directions, meaning that the transient increase in

saccades for these sections of the paragraph were not specific to a certain style of handwriting

(Figure 4, Figure 5). Therefore, future studies may seek to select paragraphs that are more

uniform in word length among lines to avoid this trend.

Figure 4. Forward saccades per line by handwriting style. Handwriting style does not affect forward saccades for any line more significantly than another. Standard error bars represent one standard error above and below the mean.

Figure 5. Reverse saccades per line by handwriting style. Handwriting style does not affect reverse saccades for any line more significantly than another. Standard error bars represent one standard error above and below the mean.

Shifting focus to the other measured indicator of handwriting processing employed in

this study, there was no apparent effect of handwriting style on recognition of words from the

passages (Figure 6). All handwriting styles produced comparable memory of words.

Figure 6. Number of words recognized from each paragraph by handwriting style. There was no significant effect of writing style on words recognized. Standard error bars represent one standard error above and below the mean.

This absence of difference among the number of words recognized from each passage

suggests equivalent encoding and retention of material read regardless of handwriting style.

Alternatively, given the positive correlation between saccades and attention level found by

Uzzaman and Joordens (2011), it is possible that more thorough processing of the cursive

handwriting as a product of increased number of saccades for this style obscured evidence of

enhanced memory of words from natural and printed handwriting paragraphs that may have

resulted from familiarity. Unfortunately, these potential factors are impossible to distinguish

from the results of this experiment alone. These effects could potentially be disentangled by

future research in which participants are more familiar with cursive, thereby allowing them to

use a more similar number of saccades for cursive, print, and natural handwriting. In this case,

recognition would be based solely on encoding differences among writing styles alone, rather

than number of saccades used. For the time being, however, it must be concluded that

handwriting style has no obvious role in retention of material over the short term.

Before shunning off cursive handwriting forever or deciding it is adequate to rely on

your buddy’s notes from class to prepare for a test, a few limitations for applying this study to

the real-world of reading and learning must be considered. One of such limitations may be the

quick turn-around of testing retention of material. Typically, a maximum of five minutes passed

between when participants read the material and when they were asked to recognize it. In real

studying situations, the student is (hopefully) studying prior to five minutes before an exam!

Therefore, it may be more applicable to run a study in which retention is assessed one to two

days following review of the material to better simulate the timeline of the educational

process. Another limitation of this study is that the participants were required to read the

material aloud and only one time through without pause. This is not a method used by most

when attempting to commit information to memory. It is easy to imagine that the observations

made in this study may become even more robust without these experimental requirements,

but further investigation is necessary to examine the true effects. Additionally, a major factor

not considered in this study is the organization of the material on the page, as all paragraphs

used were uniform in structure. In respect to notetaking, it is likely that people may bullet point

or emphasize different material of their notes in different ways, and this organization may

enable a certain flow of thinking that is most suited to that person. Therefore, there are many

other factors to consider in this complex topic of retention of handwritten material before

strongly embracing and applying the findings of this study to the real world.

Despite these limitations, the overall results of this study suggest that the processing of

variant styles of text is also somewhat variant. Although handwriting has no effect on memory

performance, fewer saccades are used for the same amount of text for handwritings that are

perhaps sufficiently legible or more similar in style to one’s own. At the very minimum, reading

one’s own handwriting is at least as efficient as reading someone else’s, and perhaps even

significantly more efficient if that other person’s handwriting is unfamiliar to the reader.

Compounded with the fact that personally writing out material allows for heightened retention

of the information (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014), handwriting material to be later reviewed

may very well be a secret to success in the classroom.

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to those who participated in data collection, my mother for preparing the

cursive handwriting samples utilized in this study, the authors from whose novels I drew

excerpts, Wofford College’s Psychology Department for providing me with testing materials,

and Dr. Pittman for guiding and assisting me with experimental design and data analysis.

Works Cited

Bateman, S., Mandryk, R., Gutwin, C., Genest, A., McDine, D., & Brooks, C. (2010). Useful junk?:

the effects of visual embellishment on comprehension and memorability of charts.

Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 10,

2573-2582.

Mueller, P., & Oppenheimer, D. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard. Psychological

Science, 25(6), 1159-1168.

Rayner, K. (1986). Eye movements and the perceptual span in beginning and skilled readers,

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 41(2), 211-236.

Rioult-Pedotti, M., Friedman, D., Hess, G., & Donoghue, J. (1998). Strengthening of horizontal

cortical connections following skill learning. Nature Neuroscience, 1, 230-234.

Uzzaman, S. & Joordens, S. (2011). The eyes know what you are thinking: Eye movements as

an objective measure of mind wandering. Consciousness and Cognition, 20, 1882-1886.

Passage Origins

Keyes, F. P. (1919). The old gray homestead. Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company. 41-

42.

Saroyan, W. (1953). The laughing matter. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc. 157.

Child, L. (2014). Personal: a Jack Reacher novel. Penguin Random House. 179.