The role of vision in the temporal and spatial control of handwriting

The general observation that handwriting is not noticeably impaired by the withdrawal of vision can be explained in two ways. One might argue that vision is not needed during the act of writing. Micro-analyses should then reveal that spatial as well as temporal writing features are identical in conditions of vision and no vision. Alternatively, it is possible that vision is needed during the act of writing, but that without vision possible errors and inaccuracies have to be prevented. Assuming that the latter would place an extra demand on movement control, this should be revealed by an increase in processing time. We have found evidence for the latter view in the present study in which 12 subjects wrote a nonsense letter sequence with and without vision. Close examination showed that writing shapes remained equally invariant under both vision conditions, suggesting that spatial control was unaffected by withdrawing vision. The prediction that invariance of shapes is preserved in the absence of vision at the expense of processing time increments was confirmed. The increase of reaction time observed when visual guidance was withdrawn suggests that more processing time was needed prior to the movement start. Moreover, the RT increment was larger when a short writing duration was instructed. The present findings will be discussed in light of the remarkable flexibility of writing as a motor skill in which writers appear to be able to employ specific strategies to preserve shape in the absence of visual guidance.