Occupational Therapy Handwriting Practice in South Korea

Background. Internationally, handwriting difficulty is a common issue among children. Occupational therapists are involved in helping children to improve their handwriting. Previous studies have summarised occupational therapy research and practice in handwriting, but these have not included information about occupational therapy practice for children’s handwriting in South Korea. To understand the nature of practice and identify the scope of evidence relating to South Korean occupational therapy for children with handwriting difficulties, a review of published literature on this topic is required. Methods. A scoping review was conducted to identify and summarize published literature on occupational therapy paediatric handwriting practice in South Korea. A detailed context of the review was provided in a background chapter (Chapter 1 “Introduction”). The introduction provided comprehensive information about the hand, handwriting, South Korea and the occupational therapy profession in South Korea to define terms and to help provide an understanding of occupational therapy practice conducted in Korea. Chapter 2 “A scoping review of occupational therapy handwriting literature” is presented in the form of a manuscript for submission to a peer-reviewed journal (Occupational Therapy International). This background, the gap in evidence and research design used is presented. This study used a scoping review methodological framework suggested by Arksey and O’Malley (2005). This five-step framework was followed. First, the research question was identified; second, a search strategy was designed in Korean and English, and implemented in three databases which published or may have published Korean occupational therapy research. Third, after inspection a total of 22 articles were selected for inclusion from 151 sources. Fourth, a data-extraction form in Excel™ was created and this recorded the characteristics of each of these studies. At the last stage, a descriptive analysis of numerical data and thematic analysis were used to collate, summarise and synthesise the data from the 22 included papers. Results. Key findings of the scoping review demonstrate that hospitals and school-based settings were the most commonly studied service sites. Most studies were with Korean children with cerebral palsy. Standardized assessments were predominantly used, and these measured various performance components, rather than the “task” or “activity” of handwriting. Author-designed handwriting assessments which were reported to be based on previous studies were frequently used for measurement of handwriting quality. These did not ⅳ go through standardisation or validation processes. A sensory integration approach was the most popular approach to intervention, and the most targeted performance component of handwriting was fine-motor skills. Most study designs were of low research rigour in the evidence-based hierarchy. This study highlights that there is a diverse approach to assessments and intervention in Korean occupational therapy handwriting research, indicating that there is no consensus on the best handwriting approach in Korean occupational therapy literature. Conclusion. Most of the found evidence was focussed on clinical samples and used a sensory integrative approach. This is different to international occupational therapy research literature (which used standardised instruments) which focused mostly on typically developing children and used a wide number of conceptual approaches. Korean research was similar in the low level of research evidence generated. In the future, Korean occupational therapy handwriting research should use rigorous designs and should use assessments to accommodate the cultural and linguistic uniqueness of Korea. This will provide more opportunities to enhance the diversity of evidence on handwriting research

Participative Urban Health and Healthy Aging in the Age of AI

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2022, held in Paris, France, in June 2022. The 15 full papers and 10 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 33 submissions. They cover topics such as design, development, deployment, and evaluation of AI for health, smart urban environments, assistive technologies, chronic disease management, and coaching and health telematics systems

Investigating Relationships Among Measures of English and Chinese Handwriting Fluency in Early-Elementary Chinese Dual Language Immersion Students

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between English and Chinese handwriting fluency measures in early-elementary Chinese Dual Language Immersion students. This was done by conducting five handwriting fluency tasks among Chinese Dual Language Immersion students and comparing the findings. First, the findings showed that there was a moderate correlation between the participants\u27 English and Chinese handwriting fluencies and that English fluencies predicted Chinese fluencies. However, the students could write English numbers and letters much faster than Chinese characters. Second, as expected, Chinese DLI participants showed that handwriting fluency improved as grade level increased. Third, third-grade students were not much faster than second-grade students on both English number and English Chinese number tasks. The study informs Chinese DLI programs as it shows that supplemental handwriting instruction is likely necessary to narrow the differences between English and Chinese handwriting fluencies. Instructional amount and quality could be improved to increase Chinese fluency, and English and Chinese partner teachers should collaborate more closely and complement each other\u27s handwriting instructional efforts. In summary, this study identifies significant differences in English and Chinese handwriting fluencies, and further studies may be necessary to consider ways to address these differences

Teaching and Learning Chinese as a Foreign Language in the United States: To Delay or Not to Delay the Character Introduction

The study explored whether or not to delay introducing Chinese characters as part of first year Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) courses in post-secondary institutions in the U.S. Topics investigated: a) timing structures of current CFL programs in the U.S.; b) CFL teachers’ and students’ beliefs and rationales of an appropriate timing to introduce characters; c) CFL teachers’ and students’ beliefs about the importance and difficulty of different Chinese language skills; and d) CFL teachers’ and students’ beliefs about the requirement of handwriting in beginning-level CFL courses. Data were collected through a large-scale online student survey with 914 students and a large-scale online teacher survey with 192 teachers. At the same time, a total of 21 students and five teachers from a delayed character introduction (DCI) program and an immediate character introduction (ICI) program were interviewed. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the data. Results indicate that the majority of CFL programs did not delay teaching characters; most of teachers and students believed that speaking and listening were the most important skills and reading and especially writing characters were the most difficult skills; and most of teachers and students did not favor alternative methods to replace the handwriting of characters even though they considered handwriting to be the most difficult skill. With few studies carried out to investigate the timing issue of character teaching, results from the study provided foundational knowledge for CFL educators to better understand CFL teaching and learning in general, along with the teaching and learning of written Chinese characters, in particular

The stroop task sex difference: Evolved inhibition or color naming?

Previous research shows that women outperform men in the classic Stroop task, but it is not known why this difference occurs. There are currently two main hypotheses: (1) women have enhanced verbal abilities, and (2) women show greater inhibition. In two Stroop experiments, we examined the Inhibition hypothesis by adopting a procedure, often used in visual cognition paradigms, that induces a particular inhibitory component. So-called Negative Priming occurs when a distracting non-target stimulus on one trial becomes the target on the following trial. Results from our experiments showed that the degree to which this type of inhibition occurs within the Stroop effect is no different for men and women. This was the case irrespective of whether participants made a vocal response (Experiment 1; n = 64, 32 men and 32 women) or a manual response (Experiment 2; n = 64, 32 men and 32 women). These results do not therefore support the Inhibition hypothesis. We additionally review findings from a range of paradigms that can be seen as indexing the different components required for the Stroop task (e.g., distractor suppression). This review suggests that the sex effect is due to superior color naming ability in women.publishedVersio

The stroop task sex difference: Evolved inhibition or color naming?

Previous research shows that women outperform men in the classic Stroop task, but it is not known why this difference occurs. There are currently two main hypotheses: (1) women have enhanced verbal abilities, and (2) women show greater inhibition. In two Stroop experiments, we examined the Inhibition hypothesis by adopting a procedure, often used in visual cognition paradigms, that induces a particular inhibitory component. So-called Negative Priming occurs when a distracting non-target stimulus on one trial becomes the target on the following trial. Results from our experiments showed that the degree to which this type of inhibition occurs within the Stroop effect is no different for men and women. This was the case irrespective of whether participants made a vocal response (Experiment 1; n = 64, 32 men and 32 women) or a manual response (Experiment 2; n = 64, 32 men and 32 women). These results do not therefore support the Inhibition hypothesis. We additionally review findings from a range of paradigms that can be seen as indexing the different components required for the Stroop task (e.g., distractor suppression). This review suggests that the sex effect is due to superior color naming ability in women.publishedVersio

Linguistic, visuospatial, and kinematic writing characteristics in cognitively impaired patients with beta-amyloid deposition

IntroductionBeta-amyloid (Aβ) deposition, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), begins before dementia and is an important factor in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Aβ deposition is a recognized risk factor for various cognitive impairments and has been reported to affect motor performance as well. This study aimed to identify the linguistic, visuospatial, and kinematic characteristics evident in the writing performance of patients with cognitive impairment (CI) who exhibit Aβ deposition.MethodsA total of 31 patients diagnosed with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) with Aβ deposition, 26 patients with Alzheimer’s-type dementia, and 33 healthy control (HC) participants without deposition were administered tasks involving dictation of 60 regular words, irregular words, and non-words consisting of 1–4 syllables. Responses from all participants were collected and analyzed through digitized writing tests and analysis tools.ResultsIn terms of linguistic aspects, as cognitive decline progressed, performance in the dictation of irregular words decreased, with errors observed in substituting the target grapheme with other graphemes. The aMCI group frequently exhibited corrective aspects involving letter rewriting during the task. In terms of visuospatial aspects, the AD group displayed more errors in grapheme combination compared to the HC group. Lastly, in the kinematic aspects, both the aMCI group and the AD group exhibited slower writing speeds compared to the HC group.DiscussionThe findings suggest that individuals in the CI group exhibited lower performance in word dictation tasks than those in the HC group, and these results possibly indicate complex cognitive-language-motor deficits resulting from temporal-parietal lobe damage, particularly affecting spelling processing. These results provide valuable clinical insights into understanding linguistic-visuospatial-kinematic aspects that contribute to the early diagnosis of CI with Aβ deposition

An investigation of handwriting legibility and pencil use tasks in healthy older adults

This project explores handwriting legibility and pencil use tasks in 120 healthy older Australian adults, aged 60 to 99 years. A cross sectional study design was used. The aim of these studies was to explore if handwriting legibility or pencil use performance deteriorated as people aged. This is important to help therapists determine if handwriting difficulties following stroke, or other medical conditions, are more likely a consequence of condition-related impairments or due to ‘normal ageing’. Tasks performed under standardised test conditions included writing copied and self-composed sentences, shopping lists, transcribing a telephone message and completing the ‘lines’ and ‘dots’ pencil use Motor Assessment Scale (MAS) subtests. Handwriting legibility was scored using the Modified Four Point Scale-version 2. The first study explored the distribution of handwriting legibility scores in healthy older adults, relationships between handwriting legibility, age and writing task and reliability of rating procedures. Results indicated that handwriting generally remained legible in older adults, regardless of increasing age. The second study explored the performance of older adults without stroke on the ‘lines’ and ‘dots’ tasks, the relationship between age and task performance, and the relationship between writing speed and performance on the ‘lines’ task. Results indicated that many older adults failed the ‘lines’ task and many over 90 years of age failed the ‘dots’ task. Results suggest that impaired handwriting legibility in older adults who have had a stroke (or other medical condition) is likely due to the effects of the medical condition (or the complexity of the task) rather than ‘normal ageing’. However, failure to pass the ‘lines’ and ‘dots’ tasks is likely related to a combination of age and individual skill level and not solely due to condition-related impairment. A revised method for rating performance on the ‘lines’ and ‘dots’ tasks is also proposed

Video-Mediated Listening Passages and Typed Note-Taking: Examining Their Effects on Examinee Listening Test Performance and Item Characteristics.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2017