Abstract
Handwriting (HW) training seems to boost recognition of visual graphs and learning to read more than other learning experiences. However, effects across studies appear to be variable and the underlying cognitive mechanism has been elusive. We thus conducted a meta-analysis on 50 independent experiments (with 1525 participants) to determine the magnitude of this HW benefit in visual graph recognition, while enlightening the underlying cognitive mechanism, by investigating four types of moderators: training program (type of control training, presence/absence of phonological training, and HW tasks adopted); set size and training regime (duration and frequency of session and total amount of training); granularity of visual discrimination and perceptual learning tasks; and age of participants. The benefit from HW training was moderate-to-large and significant (Hedge’s g = 0.58, SE = .09) and was also modulated by the type of control training (larger relative to motor, g = 0.78, than to visual control, g = 0.37), phonological training (larger when it was absent, g = 0.79, than present, g = 0.47), and granularity of visual discrimination (larger for fine-grained, g = 0.93, than coarse-grained, g = 0.19). These results seem consistent with symbolic accounts that hold that the advantage from HW training in visual graph recognition is about perceptual learning rather than the motor act. Multiple meta-regressions also revealed that training regime moderated the HW benefit. We conclude that HW training is effective to improve visual graph recognition, and hence is still relevant for literacy instruction in the present digital era.
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Notes
The term graph is preferable to letter because it applies to orthographic characters of any writing system and not just to alphabets (Chang et al., 2018). In the present work, we also used this term when referring to letter-like symbols as those adopted in studies with artificial scripts even if these symbols are not part of natural written scripts.
Note that multisensory integration is also involved in audio-visual integration (for which evidence of cross-modal integration is quite robust; for a review, see, e.g., Chandrasekaran, 2017) and this does not necessarily favour an embodied cognitive account. Yet, whereas audio-visual integration is the basis of phonological decoding (e.g., Share, 1995; Ziegler & Goswami, 2006), motoric information is not, and hence, adding a motoric dimension would not enhance a core aspect of reading.
All databases are available at https://osf.io/8sqfa (https://osf.io/wzdxn/).
Due to violation of normality assumptions, non-parametric, Mann-Whitney U-test was used; r (r = Z / √N) is reported as estimate of ES, following Cohen (1988): i.e., small, moderate, and large ES correspond to 0.10, 0.30, and 0.50, respectively.
During the revision of the present work, we have learned that Wiley and Rapp (2021) had published a multi-session training study examining the nature of the cognitive representations that emerged via HW training relative to motor control (typewriting) and to visual control training on the new graphs.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Luísa Corbal for the assistance in assembling a preliminary dataset.
Funding
This work was supported by the Research Center for Psychological Science (CICPSI) at Universidade de Lisboa, by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, FCT (ref: PTDC/PSI-GER/3281/2020), and FEDER (POR Lisboa 2020; ref: PTDC/PSI-GER/28184/2017), and the IF-2015 Program (IF/00533/2015). Financial sources had no involvement in the research.
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Conceptualization: T. Fernandes and S. Araújo; Methodology: S. Araújo and T. Fernandes; Formal analysis and investigation: M. Domingues, S. Araújo, T. Fernandes; Validation: S. Araújo and T. Fernandes; Writing - original draft preparation: T. Fernandes and S. Araújo; Writing - review and editing: S. Araújo, M. Domingues, T. Fernandes; Funding acquisition: T. Fernandes and S. Araújo; Supervision: T. Fernandes and S. Araujo.
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Susana Araújo and Tânia Fernandes are contributed equally
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Araújo, S., Domingues, M. & Fernandes, T. From Hand to Eye: a Meta-Analysis of the Benefit from Handwriting Training in Visual Graph Recognition. Educ Psychol Rev 34, 1577–1612 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09651-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-021-09651-4