Contribution of finger tracing to the recognition of Chinese characters

Finger tracing is a simulation of the act of writing without the use of pen and paper. It is claimed to help in the processing of Chinese characters, possibly by providing additional motor coding. In this study, blindfolded s ubjects were equally good at identifying Chinese characters and novel visua l stimuli through passive movements made with the index finger of the prefe rred hand and those made with the last finger of that hand. This suggests t hat finger tracing provides a relatively high level of coding specific to i ndividual characters, but non-specific to motor effectors. Beginning each s troke from the same location, i.e. removing spatial information, impaired r ecognition of the familiar characters and the novel nonsense figures. Passi vely tracing the strokes in a random sequence also impaired recognition of the characters. These results therefore suggest that the beneficial effect of finger tracing on writing or recall of Chinese characters is mediated by sequence and spatial information embedded in the motor movements, and that proprioceptive channel may play a part in mediating visuospatial informati on. Finger tracing may be a useful strategy for remediation of Chinese lang uage impairments.