Righting errors in writing errors: the Wing and Baddeley (1980) spelling error corpus revisited

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Linguistics
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• Analysis of a previously published corpus of handwriting errors (slips).
• Application of the proportional allocation algorithm by Machtynger and Shallice (2009).

Discussion:

• The distribution of slips within words was examined.
• Comparison of current findings with previous analyses of the same corpus.
• Exploration of positional effects on handwriting error frequency.

Key Insights:

• A higher proportion of slips occurs in the middle of words compared to the ends.
• Crucially, the proportion of slips is now found to be greater at the word's end than at its beginning, a shift from prior observations.
• This positional pattern of errors aligns with the graphemic output buffer model.

Outlook:

• Further investigation into the temporal dynamics of the graphemic output buffer.
• Exploring the role of working memory in handwriting production.
• Cross-linguistic comparisons of handwriting error patterns.