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Published on: May 15, 2019
Visual and proprioceptive recognition of cursive letters in young children
Annie Vinter1, Estelle Chartrel
1University of Bourgogne, Pôle 2AFE, Espanade Erasme, LEAD, CNRS-5022, Dijon Cedex, France. annie.vinter@u-bourgogne.fr
Abstract:
Two experiments investigated visual and proprioceptive recognition of cursive letters in young children. In Experiment 1, children aged 3-5 years were asked to recognize a visually presented target letter after a 3s inspection time, from among two distracters: a highly and a moderately similar letter. Visual letter recognition improved rapidly between 3 and 5 years and was a function of the "uniqueness" of letter shape and of letter frequency. In Experiment 2, children aged 4-6 years were asked to recognize a target letter from among 2 distracters, after having traced over the letter in a "blind" condition, with their hand guided by the experimenter. Proprioceptive recognition developed more slowly than visual recognition, and was not a function of letter frequency. The results are discussed in terms of integration versus differentiation of perceptual information, and of the tendency to base recognition on local rather than global similarity.
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