2. Issues

2.1 Learning to write: a cognitive psychology perspective

Writing is a particular and complex act involving multiple linguistic, cognitive, biophysical and motor processes. As a motor activity, writing involves proximal joints, the shoulder and elbow (responsible for arm and forearm movements), and distal joints, the wrist and hand (responsible for hand and finger movements). This effector system, with its multiple degrees of freedom, enables the production of sequential writing movements that respect the strong spatial constraints linked to the normative aspect of writing (producing letters of normal size between the lines of a notebook). During writing, the proximal articulations are responsible for large-amplitude movements, left/right translations, line breaks and line jumps -...