Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing © 2014 Indian Association of Health

2014, 5(5), 591–595 Research and Welfare

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Role of visual perception in improving quality of handwriting

Rupinder Kaur Grewal, Deepika Vig and Sarita Saini
Department of Human Development, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab

Visual perceptual skills play an important role in learning how to form letters. These skills are also important for
copying, sizing, spacing and orienting letters and words correctly. The present study aimed to ascertain the contri-
bution of visual perception in determining the quality of handwriting. The total sample for the study comprised of
160 public school children studying in grade 3 and 4. Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices was administered to
ascertain intellectual abilities of the children. They were further evenly distributed across the categories of good
and poor writers (English language) viz. children with good handwriting (n=80) and poor handwriting (n=80) by
administering handwriting test by Lilley (2006). The visual perception test was also administered on the same
sample. The results revealed that sub – skills of visual perception were found significantly higher among students
with good handwriting. It signifies that children with good handwriting had better visual perceptual skills in contrast
to children with poor handwriting.

Keywords: Visual Perception, Visual Discrimination, Visual Closure, Visual Motor Integration, Position in Space
and Visual Analysis, Good Handwriting, Poor Handwriting

Writing is a tool for communication. It is both a skill as well as a
means of self-expression. The complex process of writing integrates
visual, motor and conceptual abilities and is a major medium through
which children demonstrate their knowledge in academic subjects.
The process of writing involves two main activities that combine to
make it possible. One is the physical act of forming letters and words.
The second activity is the creation of a text. Visual perception is the
interpretation of visual stimuli; i.e. the brains ability to take what
the eyes see and give meaning to it. Visual perceptual difficulties
can severely hamper a child’s ability to achieve at school consider-
ing that 80 percent of what students are expected to learn in school
comes through visual opportunities. Visual perceptual processing
or visual information processing, is a set of skills we use together
visual information from the environment and integrate them with
our other senses. This is done while incorporating all the integrated
information with other things, such as past experiences, motivation
and development, so that we can derive understanding and meaning
from what we are experiencing. This process allows the development
of schemes to derive meaning from what we see (Lambert, 2012;
McMains & Davis, 2008).
Legibility and speed of handwriting are fundamental skills that
children require to during their early school years at school, writing
includes far point (from board to book) and near point (book to book)
copying tasks. Visual perceptual abilities have been reported to influ-
ence handwriting speed and legibility. It is apparent that during far
point copying the child has to frequently shift the gaze from board
to the note book. Thus, the frequency of gaze shifts would influence
the speed of handwriting, which, in turn depend on the efficiency
of visual perceptual components like: visual sequential memory,
figure ground and visual spatial relationship. Therefore, deficient
Correspondence should be sent to Rupinder Kaur Grewal
Department of Human Development.Punjab Agricultural
University, Ludhiana, Punjab
visual-perceptual abilities would affect the task requiring far point
copying than the near point copying speed.
Karlsdottir (1996) proposed two programs for children in grade
four, one involving copying exercises and one consisting in visually
and verbally explaining the letter shape. The writing quality of the
group of children who participated in the letter copying program did
not improve compared to an equivalent group that did not participate
in the program. However, the group of children who received an in-
structional program consisting in the verbal/visual demonstration of
the letter shape improved their handwriting quality. Hays (1982) and
Sovik (1976) also showed that visual and verbal prompting of letter
shapes improved handwriting accuracy. Wright and Wright (1980)
reported that copying letters improved when a dynamic model, a
model that depicted motion, was presented. Berninger et al. (1997)
selected first grade children who were experiencing difficulties in
learning to write and assigned them to five handwriting treatment
groups and a phonological awareness control condition. The four
ways of teaching handwriting were as follows:
• The child wrote the letter after seeing the instructor writing it,
• The child wrote the letter after seeing a copy of it with arrows
indicating the order and direction of each stroke,
• The child wrote the letter from memory after examining a copy
of it and
• The child wrote the letter from memory after examining a copy
of it with arrows indicating the order and direction of each
stroke.
The results showed that all the handwriting treatment groups
made greater handwriting gains than the control group, with the
highest training performance for the group that wrote the letters from
memory after seeing a copy containing numbered arrows. Jongmans
et al. (2003) investigated the effect of task-specific self-instruction
on handwriting speed and quality in children with poor handwriting.
The child had to write the letter several times and to indicate which
592 Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing 2014, 5(5), 591–595
of them was best. The results showed that children who received
the self-instruction method improved the overall legibility of their
handwriting, but not their handwriting speed, compared with children
who did not receive this kind of instruction. These results suggest that
the ability of children to accurately perceive letter shape determines
handwriting quality. They are consistent with information-processing
models of learning (Sternberg, 1969), in which the learning process
starts with the perception and storage of letter shapes in memory. It
is possible that perceptual learning leads to greater difficulties than
does the acquisition of motor skills for beginning writers.
Kumar and Rao (2011) conducted the study to investigate the
factors of visual perception that influence the near point and far point
copying speed tasks with normal and slow learners. 70 children (8-9
years; 35 normal learners, 35 slow learners) were recruited for the
study. Both groups were administered test of Visual Perception and
Upper limb speed and dexterity sub-test of Bruininks – Oseretsky
Test of Motor Proficiency (BOTMP). No significant difference was
observed in results in the upper-limb speed and dexterity subtest of
Bruininks – Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency (BOTMP) in both
groups. However, a significant difference on all the subtests of ‘Test
of visual perception skills’ (TVPS) and on near point copying (manu-
script) and far point copying (cursive) tasks of ‘Evaluation tool of
children Handwriting’ in both the groups. Moreover, large variation
in the speed of handwriting was observed in both the groups. On cor-
relating the scores of Test of visual perception skills with handwriting
speed, only visual closure showed a weak positive correlation with
near point copying speed in normal and with slow learners.
Studies have indicated that, of all perceptual-motor skills, visual-
motor integration correlates most with handwriting performance (Tseng
& Chow 2000). Daly et al. (2003) found strong positive relationships
between scores received on the Developmental Test of Visual-Motor
Integration (VMI; Beery, 1997) and children’s abilities to legibly copy
letterforms, demonstrating that visual-motor integration skills were
related to the ability of kindergarten children to copy letters legibly.
These results support the conclusion that visual-motor integration is
a requisite skill for handwriting legibility. Visual Motor Integration
(VMI) is the ability of the eyes & hands to work together in smooth,
efficient patterns. It involves visual perception and eye-hand co-
ordination. Visual-Motor skills require the ability to translate visual
perception into motor functioning and involve motor control, motor
accuracy, motor co-ordination and psychomotor speed. Visual motor
integration is an important variable to a child’s handwriting skills,
particularly when copying or transposing from printing material to
cursive or manuscript writing.
Maeland (1992) also found that among various perceptual motor
tests, Visual Motor Integration (VMI) was significant in predicting
the accuracy of handwriting performance. The sample of 59 fourth-
grade students consisted of 19 children defined as clumsy (those
who scored below average in fine and gross motor coordination
skills), 22 children defined as nonclumsy and dysgraphic and 18
typically developing children who produced cursive and manuscript
handwriting samples.
Many researchers have explained the importance of visual motor
integration (VMI ) in learning academic skills. Beery (1989) believes
that before the child learns to write, the basic geometric shapes have
to be mastered. It has been observed that as subject’s ability to copy
the forms on the visual motor integration increases, a concomitant
increase in ability to copy letters accurately is seen. Mati-zissi (1998)
observed that there is a correlation between performance in written
language and drawing or design copying tasks. Failure on visual-
motor tests may be caused by underlying visual-cognitive deficits
including visual discrimination, poor fine motor skills, inability to
integrate visual – cognitive and motor processes, or combination of
these abilities. Sanghavi and Kelkar (2005) assessed Experimental
group and control group, each consisting of 16 learning disabled
children. It was found that normal Indian children aged 10 to 14
years attain mean raw score in Developmental test of visual – motor
integration (DVMI) at younger age than normal American Children.
It was evident from Developmental test of visual – motor integration
(DVMI) raw scores that improvement in experimental group was
more as compare to control group.
But more than simply insuring that children can handwrite the
volume of work needed to be completed on paper is the need to make
sure that the written work is legible. One of the benefits of invest-
ing in handwriting education is the efficiency with which students
accomplish writing assignments that teachers can read (Goldberg
& Simner, 1999). Educators and occupational therapists need to
know whether poor handwriting ability is a consistent trait in early
elementary students so that appropriate classroom strategies and
therapeutic interventions can be developed (Marr & Cermak, 2002).
The present study was planned with following objectives:
• To identify urban elementary school children with good and poor
handwriting.
• To ascertain the performance of handwriting on two levels of
visual perception.
• To study handwriting across various dimensions of visual
perception.
Method
Sample Selection
The study was conducted in public schools of Ludhiana city. Out of
four zones of Ludhiana district, one zone was purposively selected
for this study. The total sample for the present study comprised of
160 public school children studying in grade 3 and 4, with atleast
average intelligence. They were further evenly distributed into two
categories of handwriting (English language) i.e. children with good
handwriting (n=80) and poor handwriting (n=80) by administering
handwriting test by Lilley (2006). To assess visual perceptual skills
of the children, visual perception test was administered.
Instruments
Set -A: of Occupational Therapy Screening Test by Lilley (2006) was
used to assess handwriting of the selected students. The handwriting
was assessed on 12 dimensions as described below:
• Correct formation of lower case letters.
• Correct formation of upper case letters.
• Formation of numbers.
• Alignment of letters and numbers on line.
 Grewal et al./Role of visual perception in improving quality of handwriting 593

• Consistency in size of letters and numbers. Table 1  Age and sex wise distribution of urban elementary
• Spaces between letters. school children with good and poor handwriting
(N=160)
• Spaces between words.
Variables Good handwriting Poor handwriting z – value
• Use of capital letters. (n=80) (n=80)
• Use of margins.
Frequency % Frequency %
• Reversals.
Sex
• Readability of writing.
Boys 22 27.50 65 81.25 6.83 *
• Time taken to finish written work. Girls 58 72.50 15 18.75
Age (years)
Set - B: was used to assess visual perceptual skills of the selected
7–9 39 48.75 27 33.75 1.93
students. Various sub- skills of visual perception viz. visual discrimi-
10 – 12 41 51.25 53 66.25
nation, visual closure, visual motor integration, position in space and
visual analysis were assessed. *significant ( p < 0.05)

• Visual discrimination’ is related to the ability to visually differ-

entiate small differences between similar looking forms such as
b/d, shapes such as 5/s, symbols such as ‘x’ and ‘+’ or objects. It
also includes the ability to relate these key features to memory
and categorize these forms, shapes, symbols or objects in order
to make sense of the written word or numbers.
• ‘Visual Closure’ which is the ability to recognize clues presented
visually that allow a child to determine the appearance of the
final product without all the details being present .
• ‘Visual Motor Integration (VMI)’ consists of coordinating
visual perceptual skills together with gross-motor movement
and fine-motor movement. It is the ability to integrate visual
input with motor output.
• ‘Position in Space’ which is the ability to recall the spatial
location of an object or stimuli. It is the ability to be able to
recall, identify or reproduce a design or dominant feature of an
object.
• ‘Visual analysis’ is the ability to recall the spatial location of an
object or stimuli. It is the ability to be able to recall, identify, or
reproduce a design or dominant feature of an object.
Statistical Analysis
The collected data were classified and tabulated in accordance with
the objectives to arrive at the meaningful and relevant inferences by
using arithmetic mean, z- test for difference between two proportions
and student’s t–test.
table reflects that 27.50 percent of boys were judged with good
handwriting on the basis of occupational therapy screening test in
contrast to the girls whose percentage was found comparatively much
higher (72.50%). The finding revealed that majority of girls had good
handwriting as compared to boys. These findings are strengthened
by the claim of Maeland (1992) who while studying handwriting
and perceptual-motor skills in children found that mostly boys were
identified as children with poor handwriting. He further stated that the
proportion of boys with poor handwriting was larger than expected.
Table also reveals significant difference (z – value =6.83; p < 0.05) in
sex wise distribution of children with good and poor handwriting with
more number of girls with good handwriting as compared to boys.
The table further depicts the age wise percent distribution of
children with good and poor handwriting. The table points out that
in the age group of 7-9 years, the percentage of children with good
handwriting was found to be 48.75 percent as compared to 51.25
percent in the age group of 10-12 years. Though no significant dif-
ferences were found but the table describes that with increase in
the age, number of students with poor handwriting also increased
as 33.75 percent of children in age group of 7-9 years were found
to have poor handwriting as compared to 66.25 percent in the age
group of 10 – 12 years. Therefore, it could be stated that overall
girls performed better on handwriting test and with increase in age
deterioration in handwriting skills of children was observed.
Table 2 describes the performance of children with good and poor
handwriting across two levels of visual perception. The table reflects

Discussion Table 2  Frequency distribution of children with good and poor

handwriting on two performance levels of Visual Perception
The results revealed that visual perceptual skills were found signifi-
(N=160)
cantly higher among students with good handwriting. It signifies that
children with good handwriting had better visual perceptual skills in Sr. No. Visual Good Poor z- value
contrast to children with poor handwriting. Accurately perceiving Perception handwriting handwriting
letter shapes is a critical factor for the development of handwrit- Frequency Frequency
ing legibility, because the quality of letter handwriting depends on
(%) (%) 1.80
memory references for the motor system. The findings of the study
1. Good 71 64 1.52
revealed that role of perceptual skills in handwriting acquisition were
(88.75) (80.00)
a prerequisite for handwriting success.
2. Poor 9 16
Table 1 describes the sex and age wise distribution of urban
(11.25) (20.00)
elementary school children with good and poor handwriting. The
594 Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing 2014, 5(5), 591–595

that no significant differences were observed in frequency distribution 6.81 (±1.04). Highly significant (t -value=2.98; p <0.01) mean dif-
of children with good and poor handwriting skills across two levels ferences were also observed in visual motor integration. The children
of performance as majority of children with good (88.75%) and with good handwriting had mean value of 2.18 (±0.59) as compared
poor handwriting (80.00 %) showed good visual perceptual skills. to the mean value of 1.86 (±0.76) in children with poor handwriting.
However, the percentage of children with poor handwriting (20 %) Similar findings have been reported by many researches (Cornhill
was found more in children who had poor visual perceptual skills. & Case-Smith, 1996; Daly et al., 2003; Hagborg & Aiello-Coultier,
From the above data it can be concluded that proportion of children 1994; Maeland, 1992; Tseng & Murray, 1994; Weil & Amundson,
with good and poor visual perception did not differ significantly as 1994; Weintraub & Graham, 2000) that for success in handwriting,
far as handwriting were concerned. visual motor integration is a key sensorimotor component which is
Table 3 describes the mean scores of children with good and poor known to be ‘moderately to strongly’ related to handwriting as it is the
handwriting skills across various dimensions of visual perception. ability to look at a form and copy it accurately. `Position in space’ is
In case of visual discrimination, no significant mean differences the relationship of an object to the observer i.e. upright, reversed and
were found in children with good and poor handwriting. Whereas, left or right and significant mean differences were found (t – value
significant differences were observed across the sub-skills of visual =2.27; p <0.05) in the mean scores of children with good handwrit-
closure, visual motor integration, position in space and visual analysis. ing 17.57 (± 3.29) and poor handwriting 16.28 (±3.89). Another
The table further explains that visual analysis and visual motor important sub skill is ‘Visual analysis’ which is used to identify, sort,
integration had emerged as significant strengths among children with organize, store and recall visually presented information. It is the
good handwriting. Position in space followed by visual closure had ability to take in visual information, remember it and apply it later.
also contributed positively towards good handwriting skills. Across As reported earlier, in this sub- skill also significant differences were
all the sub-skills, mean values of children with good handwriting found (t– value =3.93; p <0.01) in the mean score of students with
were found higher than the mean values of children with poor hand- good handwriting 4.03 (± 1.35) and poor handwriting 3.13(± 1.54).
writing. The table also depicts that total visual perception was found The overall picture of the table depicts that except visual discrimi-
significantly better (t- value=4.23; p <0.01) in children with good nation all sub – skills of visual perception were found to be better
handwriting skills with mean value of 44.11 (±5.15) as compared in children with good handwriting as compared to their counter-
to the children with poor handwriting whose mean value was found parts. Hence, it could be inferred that visual perception plays a very
to be 40.08 (±6.80). significant role in developing better writing skills among children.
‘Visual Closure’ is the ability to recognize clues presented visually
that allow children to determine the appearance of the final product Conclusion
without all the details being present. Significant mean differences (t-
The results revealed that visual perceptual skills were found signifi-
value=2.07; p <0.05) were found in the mean scores of children with
cantly higher among students with good handwriting. It signifies that
good handwriting 7.15 (±1.04) and children with poor handwriting
children with good handwriting had better visual perceptual skills in
contrast to children with poor handwriting. Accurately perceiving
letter shapes is a critical factor for the development of handwrit-
Table 3  Mean scores (± S.D) of children with good and poor
ing legibility, because the quality of letter handwriting depends on
handwriting across various dimensions of visual perception
memory references for the motor system. The findings of the study
(N=160)
revealed that role of perceptual skills in handwriting acquisition were
Sr. No. Sub skills of Good Poor t-value a prerequisite for handwriting success.
visual perception handwriting handwriting
(n=80) (n=80)
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