Previous research indicates that writing practice may be more beneficial than nonmotor practice for letter learning. Here, we report a training study comparing typing, visual, and writing learning conditions in adults (N = 42). We investigated the behavioral consequences of learning modality on literacy learning and evaluated the nature of the learned letter representations. Specifically, the study addressed three questions. First, are the benefits of handwriting practice due to motor learning per se or to other incidental factors? Second, do the benefits generalize to untrained tasks? And third, does handwriting practice lead to learning and strengthening only of motor representations or of other types of representations as well? Our results clearly show that handwriting compared with nonmotor practice produces faster learning and greater generalization to untrained tasks than previously reported. Furthermore, only handwriting practice leads to learning of both motor and amodal symbolic letter representations.

先前的研究表明，对于字母学习，写作练习可能比非运动练习更有益。在这里，我们报告了一项比较成人打字、视觉和写作学习条件的训练研究（N= 42)。我们调查了学习方式对识字学习的行为后果，并评估了学习字母表示的性质。具体来说，该研究解决了三个问题。首先，手写练习的好处是运动学习本身还是其他附带因素？其次，这些好处是否适用于未经训练的任务？第三，手写练习是否只导致学习和加强运动表征或其他类型的表征？我们的结果清楚地表明，与非运动练习相比，手写比以前报道的更快的学习和对未经训练的任务的泛化能力更强。此外，只有手写练习才能学习运动和非模态符号字母表示。