Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/157

Rh psychologists and pathologists, particularly in connection with the investigation of agraphia, that is, loss or impairment of the power to write. But the interest in such difficulties has centered largely in the fact that study of them might contribute to the physiological problem of the localization of cerebral function. If more than this, the interest has usually limited itself to an analysis of the situation in sensory terms; the details of the resulting expression have been but little studied. The growing interest in the psychology of lapses, both linguistic and graphic, and the development of a technique for such study is of great promise. In the case of the graphic lapse there is need not merely of the tabulation of what kind of errors are made, but also a reproduction of the writing in which the errors are found. Will such writing show characteristic variations in amplitude, pressure, and the like?

Even apart from the question as to the effect of a "hitch" in the process upon the appearance of writing, we may ask whether the general appearance and characteristics of writing are affected by the type of thought-process normal for any given individual. An intensive study of imagery types has always recognized, although with considerable divergence of opinion as to details, the varieties of the word-image. The word mentally seen or heard, spoken or written, has been found to play an important part in the complex thought-processes that underlie the consciousness of meaning and the possibility of its expression. The question of significance here is how far one sort of verbal imagery is potent in initiating the written word of any individual and whether any difference in written gesture marks off the individual who habitually indulges himself in visual imagery from the man who is more motor in type or more dependent upon auditory images.

Back even of this question lies the more deep-cutting one of the significance to the whole mental life of the predominance of the sensations, perceptions and images of a ruling sense. At what point and to what extent in the process of learning to write does the visual-motor coordination fall under the ruling sense and what effect has such subordination upon the general appearance and character of the resulting chirography? One feels certain that the handwriting of the man visually inclined must differ ^om that of the man preoccupied with motor details, but is unable to specify the difference. Yet the problem does not remain insoluble, for there are simple methods of determining the part played by each sense in control of the writing of any individual. Accompanying sensations such as those of sight and sound may be eliminated from the situation and the effect noted; or conflict with visual or auditory or motor images may be introduced and the results recorded. The investigation of the varieties of writing-control with the relation of each to writing-appearance offers a tempting field for work. But here speculation must wait upon the facts.