Head-mounted eye-tracking and visual-motor integration: The development of handwriting in young children

• In Event: 1-203 - The development of visual-motor integration during activities of daily living: From research to translation

Integrative Statement

Despite the increasing use of keyboards, handwriting is still considered a fundamental skill that young children need to master to achieve academic success in the elementary school years (Cahill, 2009). Previous research on handwriting development has focused primarily on the product rather than the process by which young children write. Learning to write letters and words, however, requires children to integrate visual information and fine motor skills in real time. To understand this process, we adapted head-mounted eye-tracking technology to examine how children (and adults) coordinate eye and hand when copying written stimuli. We bring together three studies with preschool to first grade children to investigate visual-motor integration during early handwriting.
In the first study, we investigated visual-motor integration while kindergarten children (N=23) and adults (N=11) copied individual letters and letter strings. Results indicated that kindergarten children copied single letters following a single fixation to the letter, as did adults. In contrast, when the cognitive demands of the task increased and participants were presented letter strings, children made approximately twice as many fixations as adults (p<.005).
In a second study, we investigated four-to-seven-year-old children’s (N=40) visual-motor integration during letter and symbol copying. Children copied English letters and Cyrillic symbols and their eye movements during handwriting were analyzed. When copying a single letter, children made fewer fixations to the familiar English letters than to the unfamiliar Cyrillic symbols (p<.001). Following up on this familiarity effect within the English letters, we coded letter frequency in popular children’s handwriting workbooks. Results showed that children fixated the stimulus more often while copying the less familiar letter “K” than when copying the more familiar letters “B” or “P” (ps<.001, Figure 1).
In a new study, we extended these methods to investigate the effect of stimulus complexity on visual-motor integration during form copying. Kindergarten children (N=20) wore a head-mounted eye-tracker while completing the Beery Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration (VMI), an instrument used by many practitioners to assess visual-motor integration skills. In the Beery VMI, participants are scored only on accuracy (0/1 for each item). In contrast, we examined children’s ongoing visual-motor integration as they copied each of the Beery stimuli. Children made a similar number of fixations to each Beery VMI stimulus before they began copying, but as stimulus complexity increased, they made more re-fixations to the stimulus during copying (p<.001, Figure 2). This finding suggests that although children may successfully copy Beery VMI stimuli, there can be meaningful differences in visual-motor integration as they do so.
Collectively, our findings illustrate how advances in visual-motor integration contribute to the development of handwriting. In the early school years, children become more efficient in coordinating eye and hand as they learn to copy letters and words. Our process oriented methods also highlight substantial differences in visual-motor integration performance that are not captured by traditional assessments. We propose that these methods could be used by practitioners to provide more fine-grained assessments of visual-motor integration as children learn to write.

Authors

• Nicholas E Fears, Tulane University
  Presenting Author

• Brooke C Bailey, Case Western Reserve University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Blair Youmans, Tulane University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jeffrey J. Lockman, Tulane University
  Non-Presenting Author