Handwriting is an important skill in literate societies. This project investigates two intricately related theoretical issues, namely the extent to which handwriting is accomplished based on phonological (ie, spoken) codes, and whether writing, which minimally requires knowledge about letters and their order, additionally constrained by higher-level language characteristics which are known to influence spoken production, such as syllabic and metrical structure. The "implicit priming" (IP) task, a widely used method in research on spoken production, will be adopted for the investigation of writing. The first part of the project will investigate whether priming in a written version of this task is constrained by spelling, sound, or both. The second part will assess whether facilitation is sensitive to the number of syllables, stress pattern, or abstract consonant-vowel structure. Each of the experiments in written production will be mirrored with spoken production studies that will establish a baseline of comparison with the well-established spoken literature. In combination, these studies will identify key constraints on theoretical accounts of how written output is generated.

Laboratory-based series of experiments, collecting response times and accuracy data on single word responses. All participants have been anonymised.