A Stroke-Level Large-Scale Database of Chinese Character Handwriting and the OpenHandWrite_Toolbox for Handwriting Research
This work addresses a gap in psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research by providing resources for studying handwriting of characters and sub-characters across languages, though it is incremental as it builds on existing tools and focuses on a specific domain.
The researchers tackled the problem of understanding how linguistic components modulate Chinese handwriting at multiple levels by constructing a large-scale database of 42 speakers handwriting 1200 characters and developing the OpenHandWrite_Toolbox for data capture and processing. Their analysis revealed that orthographic and phonological factors impact handwriting preparation and execution across character, radical, and stroke levels, with effects showing hierarchical attenuation, most pronounced at the character level and weakest at the stroke level.
Understanding what linguistic components (e.g., phonological, semantic, and orthographic systems) modulate Chinese handwriting at the character, radical, and stroke levels remains an important yet understudied topic. Additionally, there is a lack of comprehensive tools for capturing and batch-processing fine-grained handwriting data. To address these issues, we constructed a large-scale handwriting database in which 42 Chinese speakers for each handwriting 1200 characters in a handwriting-to-dictation task. Additionally, we enhanced the existing handwriting package and provided comprehensive documentation for the upgraded OpenHandWrite_Toolbox, which can easily modify the experimental design, capture the stroke-level handwriting trajectory, and batch-process handwriting measurements (e.g., latency, duration, and pen-pressure). In analysing our large-scale database, multiple regression results show that orthographic predictors impact handwriting preparation and execution across character, radical, and stroke levels. Phonological factors also influence execution at all three levels. Importantly, these lexical effects demonstrate hierarchical attenuation - they were most pronounced at the character level, followed by the radical, and were weakest at the stroke levels. These findings demonstrate that handwriting preparation and execution at the radical and stroke levels are closely intertwined with linguistic components. This database and toolbox offer valuable resources for future psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on the handwriting of characters and sub-characters across different languages.