Temporally resolved neural dynamics underlying handwriting.

How do the temporal dynamics of neural activity encode highly coordinated visual-motor behaviour? To capture the millisecond-resolved neural activations associated with fine visual-motor skills, we devised a co-registration system to simultaneously record electroencephalogram and handwriting kinematics while participants were performing four handwriting tasks (writing in Chinese/English scripts with their dominant/non-dominant hand). The neural activation associated with each stroke was clearly identified with a well-structured and reliable pattern. The functional significance of this pattern was validated by its significant associations with language, hand and the cognitive stages and kinematics of handwriting. Furthermore, the handwriting rhythmicity was found to be synchronised to the brain's ongoing theta oscillation, and the synchronisation was associated with the factor of language and hand. These major findings imply an implication between motor skill formation and the interplay between the rhythms in the brain and the peripheral systems.

Visual perceptual abilities of Chinese-speaking and English-speaking children.

This paper reports an investigation of Chinese-speaking and English-speaking children's general visual perceptual abilities. The Developmental Test of Visual Perception was administered to 41 native Chinese-speaking children of mean age 5 yr. 4 mo. in Hong Kong and 35 English-speaking children of mean age 5 yr. 2 mo. in Melbourne. Of interest were the two interrelated components of visual perceptual abilities, namely, motor-reduced visual perceptual and visual-motor integration perceptual abilities, which require either verbal or motoric responses in completing visual tasks. Chinese-speaking children significantly outperformed the English-speaking children on general visual perceptual abilities. When comparing the results of each of the two different components, the Chinese-speaking students' performance on visual-motor integration was far better than that of their counterparts (ES = 2.70), while the two groups of students performed similarly on motor-reduced visual perceptual abilities. Cultural factors such as written language format may be contributing to the enhanced performance of Chinese-speaking children's visual-motor integration abilities, but there may be validity questions in the Chinese version.

Motor-reduced visual perceptual abilities and visual-motor integration abilities of Chinese learning children.

This study investigated the relationship between motor-reduced visual perceptual abilities and visual-motor integration abilities of Chinese learning children by employing the Developmental Test of Visual Perception (Hammill, Pearson, & Voress, 1993), in which both abilities are measured in a single test. A total of 72 native Chinese learners of age 5 participated in this study. The findings indicated that the Chinese learners scored much higher in the visual-motor integration tasks than in motor-reduced visual perceptual tasks. The results support the theory of autonomous systems of motor-reduced visual perception and visual-motor integration and query current beliefs about the prior development of the former to the latter for the Chinese learners. To account for the Chinese participants' superior performance in visual-motor integration tasks over motor-reduced visual perceptual tasks, the visual-spatial properties of Chinese characters, general handwriting theories, the motor control theory and the psychogeometric theory of Chinese character-writing are referred to. The significance of the findings is then discussed.