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PubMed2001

[Talks on evaluation of students' writing (discussion)].

We talked about the evaluation of students' writing; this is thought to be difficult for teachers. We have a class "history of medicine" for freshmen in the second semester of the medical course. Students give lecture by themselves on famous historical persons in medicine such as Hippocrates, Vesalius, Pasteur and Sackett, referring to their historical significance in present medicine. As the final work of the subject they write report on "clinical medicine or medical researches 20 years in future and myself". We talked generally about educational evaluation in various aspects, concerning the methods for writing. We discussed mainly on two themes--ability to write and originality in thinking. We give a larger point to the originality, which correlates to ability to write, though we feel difficult in evaluating students' originality only by reading their reports. We also emphasize the importance of active interaction between students and teachers, and to evaluate educational activities of teachers in Japanese universities.

Aptitude↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Moving from technical to critical reflection in journalling: an investigation of students' ability to incorporate three levels of reflective writing.

This paper outlines a research project aimed at changing the levels of reflection of preregistration nursing students in a tertiary institution. Whilst reflection is widely espoused now in nursing, few studies have been found that identify whether the level of reflective writing can be identified or developed by students. Anecdotal and research evidence (Powell 1989; van Manen 1977) however indicates that most student reflective writing occurs at the technical level. A descriptive exploratory study using both qualitative and quantitative techniques was undertaken to apply van Manen's (1977) levels in a structured way in an attempt to facilitate the student's understanding and use of the levels in their reflective writing. The findings of the study indicate that student self evaluation and identification of the levels in their own writing can lead to change in the levels of critical reflective writing achieved by undergraduate students.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

[Transient improvement of writing tremor by holding breath in volition: a case report].

We report a 76-year-old Japanese woman who had tremor of her hand during writing. Her past and family histories were unremarkable. On neurological examination, there was no abnormal finding except the writing tremor and the postural tremor of her lips and jaw. Surface EMG studies revealed that regular grouped discharges, at a frequency of about 5 Hz, appeared in the wrist flexor and extensor muscles soon after she start writing; these grouped discharges were inhibited while holding breath. Her postural tremor improved after consumption of a small amount of alcohol, suggesting that she had essential tremor. Thus, she may be diagnosed as having a variant of essential tremor. On the other hand, this tremor may be interpreted as a variant of writer's cramp, since her writing tremor transiently improved when she hold breath, just like a trick. In patients with dystonia, it is well known that dystonic symptoms can be temporally ameliorated by geste movement like a "trick". Although the pathophysiological relationship between primary writing tremor and writer's cramp are unclear, the unique characters of this tremor may suggest that a focal task-specific tremor and essential tremor can co-exist.

Aged↗

PubMed1992

How to write and publish scientific papers: scribing information for pharmacists.

The principles of writing and publishing scientific papers are outlined. Scientific writing can be both professionally and financially rewarding, but many pharmacists hesitate to write for publication. A primary obstacle is not knowing how to begin. Thoughtful planning is the first and most important step. Before writing a word, the writer should identify the main message, audience, target journal, resource materials, type of manuscript, and authorship. The sections of a paper reporting original research include the title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion, references, and tables and figures. Some of these elements also appear in review papers and columns. In general, information given in one section should not duplicate information in another. The writer typically drafts the methods section first, followed by the results, the discussion, and the introduction. Along with intellectual responsibility for the paper, an author must assume various ethical responsibilities, such as ensuring that it contains no plagiarism, that all sources of funding have been acknowledged, and that the paper has not been simultaneously submitted to other journals. To enhance the likelihood of publication, the writer should edit the manuscript carefully and follow the target journal's instructions to contributors. Once the writer has submitted a paper, it must pass the muster of editors and, for peer-reviewed journals, outside experts. Several revisions may be requested before final acceptance. Pharmacists who adhere to the established pattern for writing and submitting scientific papers have the best chance of seeing their work in print.

Humans↗

PubMed2004

A collaborative clinical trial protocol writing system.

Increasing complexity in medicine has caused clinical trial experts with disparate backgrounds from multiple organizations to collaborate when developing clinical trial protocols. Although many protocol-authoring tools provide computerbased decision support to assist in protocol writing, few of them provide sufficient collaboration support for a group of protocol writers. The iterative group writing activities among interdisciplinary clinical trial experts call for advanced tool support. Here we present a web-based protocol writing system with integrated support for collaborative reviewing and collaborative editing. The system uses a shared database to store threaded review comments and version information for electronic protocols. It also captures rich group event information to provide cross-activity awareness and to facilitate self-coordination within the collaborative writing team. We believe that our system can help streamline collaborative clinical trial protocol writing processes.

Clinical Protocols↗

PubMed2005

From pedestal to possibility: learning scholarly writing using a unique course assignment.

Can the experience of interviewing published authors and reflection help developing health care professionals learn about scholarly writing? Students were asked to interview published authors by phone and in person, asking a set of six interview questions designed to give insight into the authors' writing process. Students' reflective assignments based on such interviews were then analyzed. Students identified particular rituals and routines that certain authors used to promote their writing ability, as well as the struggles authors face and their strategies to overcome these problems. After the course assignment, students viewed published authors more realistically as individuals who learned to write in a scholarly manner through experience and skill development. This course assignment is an innovative pedagogical approach to help students understand the process of writing in a scholarly manner and to encourage the professional dissemination of information via scholarly publications.

Allied Health Personnel↗

PubMed2005

Psychological impact of writing about abuse or positive experiences.

Writing often helps people deal with trauma. To see if writing about childhood physical or sexual abuse, or positive experiences, helps, psychology undergraduates wrote for 20 minutes on 4 days about their abuse, a positive experience, or a trivial topic. Among 102 who began and 85 who completed pre-, post-, and 4-week follow-up measures of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideas, abuse writers were more likely to discontinue, and positive writers were more depressed and anxious. Compared to pretest, all completers were less depressed, anxious, and suicidal at follow-up, but nonsignificantly different in health visits. Completers who wrote about abuse rated the study as more valuable than did those who wrote about positive experiences. College students who wrote about childhood physical or sexual abuse benefited from any type of structured writing assignment (where they interacted with a researcher and got extra credit) in terms of reduced anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideas, but they found value in writing about their trauma more than writing about innocuous topics.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1982

The dentist writing.

Because research dentists are far removed from formal training in scientific writing, the communication demands of dentistry become especially burdensome for them. Research dentists frequently can greatly benefit from a formal course in writing. This paper describes the philosophy, structure, and content of the professional writing course in the School of Dentistry at the University of California Los Angeles and suggests the major components such courses should have. The courses should be integral parts of the curriculum, should demonstrate the essential place of writing in scientific research, should make students sensitive to language in various contexts, and should emphasize a systematic approach to writing and revision.

Curriculum↗

PubMed1998

Illusion and uncertainty in psychoanalytic writing.

Psychoanalytic writing may be viewed as a particular version of creative process. As such, it evokes many of the self and object-related anxieties and conflicts associated with creative expression. This paper considers the role of illusion in facilitating an entry into the psychoanalytic writing process in the light of contemporary relational and feminist perspectives. It is suggested that the writer who struggles to write may engage certain real or internalized object experiences to retreat to a transitional idealized self-state and to enter the writing process. Two variants of this subjective state are described, based on Winnicott's notion of 'being' and 'doing' as underlying dimensions of human experience. Each self-state excludes a particular set of self- and object-related anxieties and creates a temporary illusion of creative certainty. That illusion helps the writer temporarily to avoid self-doubt and anxiety in order to enter the creative arena Ultimately, however, the protected writing space must expand if the writer is to address and integrate the world of psychoanalytic ideas within the writer's own creative process. This process is illustrated by a description of the evolution of my own experience as a psychoanalytic writer.

Female↗

PubMed2004

Mirror writing, left-handedness, and leftward scripts.

This minireview concerns a new observation on mirror writing. An uncommon form of writing, mirror writing is seen among healthy individuals, but it can also follow a variety of neurological diseases; it is nearly always carried out with the left hand and is more easily undertaken by left-handers. We have found that a particularly high prevalence of left-handed mirror writing has been reported among those whose native languages are traditionally written in a leftward direction, including Chinese, Japanese, and Hebrew. Innate left-handers and those whose languages are written leftward thus share an unusual facility for left-handed mirror writing, an observation that may have implications for understanding hemisphere specialization in relation to handedness.

Dominance, Cerebral↗

PubMed1998

Perseverative writing errors in a patient with Alzheimer's disease.

This study reports the writing performance of a dysgraphic patient with Alzheimer's disease and moderate dementia who frequently perseverated on strokes and letters. Letter formation errors were also frequently produced. Oral spelling was superior to written spelling. The habitual style of writing (cursive writing) was significantly more prone to perseverations than writing in uppercase letters, a form of writing less frequently used by the patient. Central (linguistic) spelling processes were relatively preserved. The pattern of preserved and impaired functions is consistent with impairment of the peripheral mechanism that generates the graphic motor patterns code. We suggest that damage to the peripheral orthographic mechanism may cause deficits in some patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Aged↗

PubMed2000

Teaching Elementary Students Who Speak Black English Vernacular to Write in Standard English: Effects of Dialect Transformation Practice.

Although nonstandard dialects of English are legitimate forms of spoken language used by many Americans, students in U.S. schools must acquire writing competence using Standard English (SE). Participants in this study were 3rd- and 4th-grade African-American students who exhibited Black English Vernacular (BEV) features in their written work. Six syntactic features differing in BEV and SE were targeted. Students received one of three treatments to increase their use of the SE features in their writing: (1) exposure to SE features in stories; (2) story exposure plus explanation of SE rules; and (3) story exposure, SE rule instruction, and guided practice transforming sentences from BEV to SE features. The third treatment proved most effective in enabling students to translate BEV sentences into SE forms and to employ the targeted SE features in their free writing. Results indicate that having students practice translating nonstandard sentences that typify their own writing and providing corrective feedback are effective for teaching them to use SE forms in their writing. Findings are interpreted to support a social-cognitive view of self-regulated learning. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

"Proprioceptive signature" of cursive writing in humans: a multi-population coding.

The goal of the present study was to investigate the firing behavior of populations of muscle spindle afferents in all the muscles acting on the ankle while this joint was being subjected to "writing-like" movements. First it was proposed to determine whether the ensemble of muscle spindles give rise to a unique, specific, and reproducible feedback information characterizing each letter, number or short word. Secondly, we analyzed how the proprioceptive feedback on the whole encodes the spatial and temporal characteristics of writing movements using the "vector population model". The unitary activity of 51 primary and secondary muscle spindle afferents was recorded in the tibial and common peroneal nerves at the level of the popliteal fossea, using the microneurographic method. The units recorded from belonged to the tibialis anterior, the extensor digitorum longus, the extensor hallucis longus, the peroneus lateralis, the gastrocnemius-soleus and the tibialis posterior muscles. The "writing-like" movements were randomly imposed at a "natural" velocity via a computer-controlled machine in a two-dimensional space. In general, muscle spindle afferents from any of the six muscles responded according to the tuning properties of the parent muscle, i.e. increasing their discharge rate during the phases where the direction of movement was within the preferred sensory sector of the parent muscle. The whole trajectory of the writing movements was coded in turn by the activity of Ia afferents arising from all the muscles acting on the joint. Both single afferent responses and population responses were found to be highly specific and reproducible with each graphic sign. The complex multi-muscle afferent pattern involved, with its timing and distribution in the muscle space, seems to constitute a true "proprioceptive signature" for each graphic symbol. The ensemble of muscle spindle afferents were therefore found to encode the instantaneous direction and velocity of writing movements remarkably accurately. It was concluded that the proprioceptive feedback from all the muscles with which the moving joint is equipped provides the CNS with highly specific information that might contribute to a graphic sign identification process.

Action Potentials↗

PubMed1987

Task-dependent gating of somatosensory transmission in two different motor tasks in man: falling and writing.

The cerebral potentials induced by an electrical stimulus (median nerve or finger) were recorded over the central region of the scalp and were analysed during falling onto the extended arms or during writing to investigate the influence of different motor tasks on the transmission of a synchronous afferent volley to the brain. During both falling (before landing) and writing, the first peaks (20-40 ms) were reduced. Later peaks (60-200 ms) were enhanced during writing but reduced during falling. A reduction of the first peak was also obtained after ischaemic blockade of group I afferents, suggesting that the cerebral transmission of group I afferents is inhibited during falling and writing. The subjects reported a corresponding reduction in the perception of the stimulus during falling. During writing, however, the large late waves indicate a task specific processing of the remaining afferent volley. Such a gating of sensory information to the brain is assumed to play a functional role in the respective motor tasks.

Evoked Potentials, Somatosensory↗

PubMed2006

Hand preference for writing and associations with selected demographic and behavioral variables in 255,100 subjects: the BBC internet study.

In an Internet study unrelated to handedness, 134,317 female and 120,783 male participants answered a graded question as to which hand they preferred for writing. This allowed determination of hand preference patterns across 7 ethnic groups. Sex differences in left-handedness were found in 4 ethnic groups, favoring males, while no significant sex differences were found in three of the groups. Prevalence of left-handedness in the largest of the ethnic groups (self-labelled as "White") was comparable to contemporary hand preference data for this group [Gilbert, A. N., & Wysocki, C. J. (1992). Hand preference and age in the United states. Neuropsychologia, 30, 601-608] but the prevalence of left-handedness in individuals >70 years of age was considerably higher in the present study. Individuals who indicated "either" hand for writing preference had significantly lower spatial performance (mental rotation task) and significantly higher prevalence of hyperactivity, dyslexia, asthma than individuals who had clear left or right hand preferences, in support of Crow et al. [Crow, T., Crow, L., Done, D., & Leask, S. (1998). Relative hand skill predicts academic ability: global deficits at the point of hemispheric indecision. Neuropsychologia, 36, 1275-1282]. Similarly, an association of writing hand preference and non-heterosexual orientation was clearest for individuals with "either" writing hand responses. We conclude that contradictions in the literature as to whether or not these variables are linked to handedness stem largely from different definitions of hand preference. Due to a lack of statistical power in most studies in the literature, the "either" hand writing preference group that yielded the most salient results in this study is not normally available for analysis.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Micrographia on free writing versus copying tasks in idiopathic Parkinson's disease.

BACKGROUND: Only a few studies have reported on the frequency of micrographia in idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD), and the definition of micrographia in these studies was based simply on the visual inspection of the patients' free writing. OBJECTIVES: We investigated the frequency of consistent (CM) and progressive (PM) micrographia by quantifying the patients' copying of a target letter or figure. METHODS: Seventy-five IPD patients and 30 sex/age matched healthy controls were assigned the tasks of free writing and letter/figure copying. CM was defined by the average size of the letter or figure written or copied by the patients below the controls' mean-2SD. PM was defined by the slope of reduction in size as a function of the serial positioning of the letters/figures below the mean-2SD of the controls. RESULTS: In the free writing, of 75 patients, only one met the criteria for the definition of CM and two met the criteria for the definition of PM definition. In contrast, letter/figure copying tasks identified 33 (44%) patients with CM and 19 (25%) with PM. CONCLUSION: Our study suggests that the prior definition of CM or PM by visual inspection in free writing task is less valid, and that the definition of CM and PM, based on the letter/figure copying tasks rather than free writing tests, could be more objective.

Aged↗

PubMed2003

Multiple patterns of writing disorders in dementia of the Alzheimer type and their evolution.

This paper reports the results obtained from a writing task given to 23 Italian patients suffering from mild to moderate dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT). Spelling performance was tested with a task that taps the sub-word-level (spelling of regular words and nonwords), and the lexical route (spelling of regular and irregular words), in line with contemporary models of writing. Each patient's performance was classified according to the emergence of dissociated patterns of damage between regular words and nonwords and between regular and irregular words. The 23 DAT patients span the whole spectrum of dysgraphic taxonomy; five showed the characteristic pattern of impairment of surface dysgraphia, two showed the characteristics of phonological dysgraphia, while a mixed pattern (i.e. better performance on regular words compared to irregular words and regular nonwords) emerged in seven cases. Three patients presented undifferentiated writing disorders, two were completely agraphic, while four patients showed only minimal or no writing defects. The rate of dissociated impairments in the lexical and the sub-word-level routine is very similar to that observed after acute focal brain damage, which contradicts the hypothesis that degenerative brain damage selectively impairs writing performance along the lexical-semantic route. To test the hypothesis that surface sub-word-level processing abilities are affected only during the evolution of the disease, nine patients were tested longitudinally after an interval of 6-12 months. Once again, the data showed high variability across subjects, and do not seem to support involvement of the sub-word-level spelling routine only at a late stage in the development of the disease.

Aged↗

PubMed2003

Visual presentation of single letters activates a premotor area involved in writing.

In the present fMRI study, we addressed the question as to whether motor-perceptual interactions might be involved in reading. Recognizing the letters encountered when reading is generally assumed to be a purely visual process, yet because we know how to write, we also possess a sensorimotor representation of the letters. Does simply viewing a letter suffice to activate the corresponding motor representation? To answer this question, we asked right-handed subjects first to look at and then to copy single letters or pseudoletters. We established that the visual presentation of letters activated a part of the left premotor cortex (BA6) that was also activated when the letters were being written by the subjects. This premotor zone resembles Exner's area, which is thought to contain the motor programs necessary for producing letters. Visually presented pseudoletters, which had never been written before by the subjects, did not activate this region. These results indicate that the writing motor processes are implicitly evoked when passively observing letters. The cerebral representation of letters is therefore presumably not strictly visual, but based on a multicomponent neural network built up while learning concomitantly to read and write. One of the components might be a sensorimotor one associated with handwriting. This finding shows the existence of close functional relations between the reading and writing processes, and suggests that our reading abilities might be somehow dependent on the way we write.

Adult↗