Associate Professor Tetsuji Nonaka of the Graduate School of Human Development and Environmental Studies, Kobe University surveys the development of writing and physical skills in learning hiragana for first-year students of Kobe University Elementary School.As a result of the investigation, it is clear that there is a process to acquire the distinction of the movement pattern of the pen tip, which is peculiar to Japanese, "rhythm of stroke" and "movement of the last stroke", which cannot be explained by the idea of the Latin alphabet. became.
Until now, regarding the acquisition of children's writing skills, developmental research in the Latin alphabet in Europe and the United States has called "improvement of fine movement (skillfulness of hands)" and "acquisition of visual representation (learning the shape of letters)". It has been described as a splicing of two different processes.
Therefore, in the research, in order to examine the development of writing and physical skills in the non-Latin alphabet, we investigated the intensive learning of hiragana in the first grade, which is carried out intensively in a relatively short period of about 3 months after entering elementary school.Using a pen tablet, we quantified the movement of the pen tip of a child who writes each hiragana stroke, and followed the change for three months.
As a result of the survey, although there are individual differences in the transition of the writing movement of each first grader, although there are individual differences,
(1) The movement of the pen tip of each stroke is clearly divided according to the type of the last stroke (stop, splash, harai).
(2) Consistency gradually appears in the rhythm of the movement of writing each stroke (the speed change pattern of the pen tip).
The two common trends of change were quantitatively shown.
This result shows that the development process of the physical skill of writing hiragana cannot be explained only by the process of "skillful finger movements" + "remembering the shape" of the development studies in Europe and the United States. It was also suggested that the process of learning writing as a differentiation of the movement may be related to a phenomenon peculiar to the Kanji cultural sphere called "Hiragana", in which the finger naturally moves when trying to remember the character.
This research result was published in the scientific journal "Developmental Psychobiology" on June 2017, 6.
Paper information:[Developmental Psychobiology] Cultural entrainment of motor skill development: Learning to write hiragana in Japanese primary school
