A study of handwriting and its implications for cognitive considerations in human‐computer interactions

This study deals with the phenomenon of cognitive performance relative to handwriting behavior, and the human factors involved in the design of handwriting characters (letters, numbers, and words). Experimental methods of electronic motion analysis were used to study the human factors related to specialization of movements, writing tasks, and individual characteristics of handwriting activity. These three parameters of handwriting performance are assumed, for the purpose of this research, to constitute also the primary parameters of cognitive performance in both handwriting and keyboard operations with computers.

Analyzing the behavioral parameters of cognition in handwriting constitutes a “natural” human factors investigation of thinking and communication, inasmuch as designs of handwriting characters and tasks (letters, numbers, words, and phrases) have been human factored over some 5,000 years in relation to the tools, materials, and functions of writing. As the most recently evolved special tool for writing, the computer can be studied in relation to the human factors in design of the behavioral parameters of handwriting.

The experimental research measured the nature of specialization and variability of cognitive performance in handwriting in relation to: (a) component movements in writing; (b) writing tasks (letter, numbers, specific words); and (c) individual legibility in writing performance. An electronic handwriting analyzer was used to measure the temporal specialization of the different parameters of writing, and a rating procedure was used to assess spatiotemporal specialization of individual legibility in writing. A historical survey of the major studies of this century dealing with cognitive learning complements the results of the experimental study in showing that the main source of variability and specialization of cognitive performance during learning is related to the makeup or human factors design of cognitive tasks. The main implication is that cognitive performance, as manifest in learning generally as well as in human‐computer interactions in particular, is mediated behaviorally through feedback‐controlled motorsensory interactions, and not primarily by hidden brain processes.