Visual Perception of Motor Anticipation in Cursive Handwriting: Influence of Spatial and Movement Information on the Prediction of Forthcoming Letters

The execution of a graphemic sequence is constrained by spatial demands that result in fluctuations of letter shape and movement time. When producing two letters (ll, le, or ln) the movement time and the letter shape of the first letter depend on the execution constraints of the second one. The motor system thus anticipates the production of the forthcoming graphemic sequence during the production of the first letter. An experiment is reported the aim of which was to examine whether the visual system could exploit this anticipatory information to predict the identity of the letter following the l. Different ls belonging to ll, le, and ln were presented on a screen. Subjects had to predict to which couple of letters (ll, le, or ln) the presented l belonged to, by using information on the shape of the l and/or the movement that produced it. Results showed that the percentages of correct responses were higher in the conditions where the stimulus provided kinematic information than in the condition in which only spatial information was available. The ability to predict the forthcoming letter seems to be mediated by implicit knowledge on motor anticipation rules.