The development of early writing: an eye movement analysis
Writing is an intricate grapho-motor skill whose early attainment is fundamental to a child's future academic and occupational success. It has been posited that humans rely heavily on the perceptual medium of vision to plan and carry out writing activities. It has also been suggested that the development of early literacy skills, such as those necessary for reading (i.e. phonemic awareness and phonological processing) may impact the cognitive planning and motor execution of writing. In order to examine these positions, this study utilized eye-tracking technology to examine the eye-gaze behavior of 5 - 6 year-old kindergarten children and 19 - 33 year-old adults who completed a copying task. This task required participants to copy a series of single letters, real words, and nonsense strings from a visually presented stimulus onto a white board easel. To examine the cognitive planning of writing, the number of visual fixations made to the stimulus to be copied, current writing area, and future writing area were coded. Results indicate that when copying single letters, real words, and nonsense letter strings adults efficiently obtain the visual information necessary to copy the stimulus prior to beginning to write. Young kindergarten children only utilize this efficient method when copying single letters, while older kindergarten utilize the efficient method exhibited by adult writers for all stimuli. Additionally, the phonemic and phonological properties of the stimulus of be copied influenced the role of vision in the copying behavior of both children and adults. And lastly, this study revealed that both children and adults utilize online visual guidance more than prospective cognitive control to guide their writing actions