SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Writing”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 415 records · Page 23Linked to original sources

PubMed1976

Variations in writing posture and cerebral organization.

Two tachistoscopic tests of cerebral lateralization were administered to 73 subjects classified by handedness, sex, and hand orientation in writing. The results indicated that the direction of cerebral lateralization could be indexed from a subject's handedness and hand posture during writing. In subjects with a normal writing posture, the linguistically specialized hemisphere was contralateral to the dominant hand, and the visuospatially specialized hemisphere was ipsilateral; the reverse was true in subjects with an "inverted" hand position during writing. Females and subjects having an inverted hand posture manifested smaller degrees of lateral differentiation than males and subjects with a typical hand posture.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

The importance of handwriting speed in adult writing.

Handwriting speed is important to the quantity and quality of children's essays. This article reviews research on adult essay writing and lecture note taking that extends this finding to adult writers. For both children and adults, research suggests that greater transcription speed increases automaticity of word production, which in turn lessens the burden on working memory (WM) and enables writers to use the limited capacity of WM for the metacognitive processes needed to create good reader-friendly prose. These findings suggest that models of writing, which emphasize the metacognitive components of writing primarily, should be expanded to include transcription (handwriting automaticity and spelling). The article also evaluates the implications of fluent handwriting to WM, given that even the most fluent handwriting can consume some WM resources and recent research and theory has highlighted the importance of WM to quality writing. Finally, the implications of handwriting and WM to assessment and instruction are discussed.

Cognition↗

PubMed2006

Early development of language by hand: composing, reading, listening, and speaking connections; three letter-writing modes; and fast mapping in spelling.

The first findings from a 5-year, overlapping-cohorts longitudinal study of typical language development are reported for (a) the interrelationships among Language by Ear (listening), Mouth (speaking), Eye (reading), and Hand (writing) in Cohort 1 in 1st and 3rd grade and Cohort 2 in 3rd and 5th grade; (b) the interrelationships among three modes of Language by Hand (writing manuscript letters with pen and keyboard and cursive letters with pen) in each cohort in the same grade levels as (a); and (c) the ability of the 1st graders in Cohort 1 and the 3rd graders in Cohort 2 to apply fast mapping in learning to spell pseudowords. Results showed that individual differences in Listening Comprehension, Oral Expression, Reading Comprehension, and Written Expression are stable developmentally, but each functional language system is only moderately correlated with the others. Likewise, manuscript writing, cursive writing, and keyboarding are only moderately correlated, and each has a different set of unique neuropsychological predictors depending on outcome measure and grade level. Results support the use of the following neuropsychological measures in assessing handwriting modes: orthographic coding, rapid automatic naming, finger succession (grapho-motor planning for sequential finger movements), inhibition, inhibition/switching, and phonemes skills (which may facilitate transfer of abstract letter identities across letter formats and modes of production). Both 1st and 3rd graders showed evidence of fast mapping of novel spoken word forms onto written word forms over 3 brief sessions (2 of which involved teaching) embedded in the assessment battery; and this fast mapping explained unique variance in their spelling achievement over and beyond their orthographic and phonological coding abilities and correlated significantly with current and next-year spelling achievement.

Age Factors↗

PubMed2006

Writing program with word prediction for a young man with multiple disabilities: a preliminary assessment.

This study assessed a writing program with word prediction, which completed the writing of a word and spoke it out only when there was certainty that such a word was the correct one. The assessment was carried out with a young man with multiple disabilities, who typically used a word-processing program without word prediction. The two programs were compared on the time required by the participant for writing general sentences, through a social validation assessment, and eventually a check on the participant's preference. Analysis showed the program with word prediction was significantly more effective in terms of the writing time, which was halved, and was deemed preferable by 40 raters (psychology students) involved in the social validation assessment and by the participant himself. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Peculiar aspects of reading and writing performances in patients with olivopontocerebellar atrophy.

Olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA) is a still debated condition, of which motor disruption is the most common feature. A high incidence of associated mood disorders may exist, but there are few studies on concomitant cognitive impairment. Our aim was to assess whether there is reading and writing disruption in olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA). 6 patients were administered different reading and writing tasks. Scores were then compared to those obtained by healthy volunteers. There was an evident impairment in reading and writing execution in our patients compared to those of the control group. On the contrary, no difference could be found in abstraction, problem-solving, and memory tasks. We discuss the results, debating the role of the cerebellum in the conscious process of cognition or in ocular movement control (necessary for reading and writing fluidity and effective execution) and in the dynamic activation of all the cerebral cortex mediated by the diffuse projection to the reticular system.

Aged↗

PubMed2003

Writing, calculating, and finger recognition in the region of the angular gyrus: a cortical stimulation study of Gerstmann syndrome.

OBJECT: In an attempt to gain a better understanding of the cerebral functions represented in the angular gyrus and to spare them during surgery, the authors studied patients with brain tumors located close to the angular gyrus and mapped cortical sites by using electrostimulation. METHODS: Before undergoing tumor removal, six right-handed patients (five with left and one with right hemisphere tumors) were studied using cortical mapping with the aid of calculating, writing, finger-recognition, and color-naming tasks in addition to standard reading and object-naming tasks (for a total of 36 brain mapping studies). Strict conditions of functional site validation were applied to include only those cortical sites that produced repetitive interferences in the function tested. Preoperatively, four of the patients exhibited discrete symptoms related to Gerstmann syndrome while performing very specific tasks, whereas the other two patients presented with no symptoms of the syndrome. No patient had significant language or apraxic deficits. Distinct or shared cortical sites producing interferences in calculating, finger recognition, and writing were repeatedly found in the angular gyrus. Object- or color-naming sites and reading-interference sites were also found in or close to the angular gyrus; although frequently demonstrated, these latter results were variable and unpredictable in the group of patients studied. Finger agnosia and acalculia sites were also found elsewhere, such as in the supramarginal gyrus or close to the intraparietal sulcus. Mechanisms involved in acalculia, agraphia, or finger agnosia (either complete interferences or hesitations) during stimulation were various, from an aphasia-like form (for instance, the patient did not understand the numbers or words given for calculating or writing tasks) to an apparently pure interference in the function tested (patients understood the numbers, but were unable to perform a simple addition). CONCLUSIONS: Symptoms of Gerstmann syndrome can be found during direct brain mapping in the angular gyrus region. In this series of patients, sites producing interferences in writing, calculating, and finger recognition were demonstrated in the angular gyrus, which may or may not have been associated with object-naming, color-naming, or reading sites.

Agnosia↗

PubMed1999

[Evolution of the medical writing of the scientific reports published by the Annales d'Otolaryngologie et de Chirurgie Cervico- Faciale].

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the quality and evolution of the medical writing of the scientific reports published by the Annales d'Otolaryngologie et de Chirurgie Cervico-faciale. MATERIAL AND METHODS: A comparative study of quantitative and qualitative data regarding the medical writting of 98 scientific reports published in 1977, 1987, and 1997 in the Annales d'Otolaryngologie et de Chirurgie Cervico-faciale. RESULTS: Various significant statistical results documented an increase within the quality of the medical writing of the scientific reports published. However, various probllems regarding the medical writing of the chapters "Title", "Summary", or "Discussion", the type of study performed, the use of biostatistics, the references, and the style still exist. CONCLUSION: Based upon the data collected, the author supports the actual policy of the editorial board regarding the increased severity concerning the medical writing of the scientific reports submitted to the Annales d'Otolaryngologie et de Chirurgie Cervico-faciale. Various propositions are also performed to increase the quality of the medical writting and the diffusion of the scientific reports published by the Annales d'Otolaryngologie et de Chirurgie Cervico-faciale.

Cervical Vertebrae↗

PubMed2002

WITH: a system to write clinical trials using XML and RDBMS.

The paper illustrates the system WITH (Write on Internet clinical Trials in Haematology) which supports the writing of a clinical trial (CT) document. The requirements of this system have been defined analysing the writing process of a CT and then modelling the content of its sections together with their logical and temporal relationships. The system WITH allows: a) editing the document text; b) re-using the text; and c) facilitating the cooperation and the collaborative writing. It is based on XML mark-up language, and on a RDBMS. This choice guarantees: a) process standardisation; b) process management; c) efficient delivery of information-based tasks; and d) explicit focus on process design.

Clinical Trials as Topic↗

PubMed1993

Physician inpatient order writing on microcomputer workstations. Effects on resource utilization.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effects on health care resource utilization of a network of microcomputer workstations for writing all inpatient orders. DESIGN: Randomized controlled clinical trial. SETTING: Inpatient internal medicine service of an urban public hospital. SUBJECTS: A total of 5219 internal medicine patients and the 68 teams of house officers, medical students, and faculty internists who cared for them. INTERVENTION: Microcomputer workstations, linked to a comprehensive electronic medical record system, for writing all inpatient orders. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Total inpatient charges for each admission and charges for specific categories of orders. A time-motion study of selected interns assessed the ordering system's time consumption. RESULTS: Intervention teams generated charges that were $887 (12.7%) lower per admission than did control teams (P = .02). Significant reductions (P < .05) were demonstrated separately for bed charges, diagnostic test charges, and drug charges. Reductions of similar proportion and statistical significance were found for hospital costs. The mean length of stay was 0.89 day shorter for intervention resident teams (P = .11). Interns in the intervention group spent an average of 33 minutes longer (5.5 minutes per patient) during a 10-hour observation period writing orders than did interns in the control group (P < .0001). CONCLUSIONS: A network of microcomputer workstations for writing all inpatient orders significantly lowered patient charges and hospital costs. This would amount to savings of more than $3 million in charges annually for this hospital's medicine service and potentially tens of billions of dollars nationwide. However, the system required more physician time than did the paper charts. Research at other sites and system advances to reduce time requirements are warranted.

Computer Communication Networks↗

PubMed1988

Pure alexia in Japanese and agraphia without alexia in kanji. The ability dissociation between reading and writing in kanji vs kana.

A 60-year-old right-handed Japanese man with infarction of the left occipital lobe and inferior temporal gyrus initially showed pure alexia in kana and kanji. Later, though pure alexia in kana persisted, his kanji reading improved markedly, but with little improvement of kanji writing. We speculate that different pathways are involved in kanji reading and writing. Wernicke's area and its surrounding left middle temporal lobe might play the most important role for kanji reading when visual information is transmitted by any pathway. The pathway from Wernicke's area to the left occipital lobe via the middle and inferior temporal pathway may be indispensable for kanji writing. We postulate "agraphia without alexia in kanji" due to left inferior temporal subcortical damage.

Agraphia↗

PubMed2005

Generating words: one approach to teaching clinical writing.

Language is our means of reaching our patients and our means of describing the process of analysis to others. The task of the case history is to show the evolution of consciousness in both analyst and patient. It will be more effective if written in a lively engaging way. The author describes one method of teaching clinical writing, introducing candidates to techniques of fiction writing and poetry. Her class has involved both focused reading and writing exercises; examples are given of both.

Clinical Competence↗

PubMed2001

Hand orthosis as a writing aid in writer's cramp.

Writer's cramp is a focal, task-specific dystonia of the hand and wrist. It primarily affects people who do a significant amount of writing, and causes difficulties in writing. We present five cases with writer's cramp who showed improvement in their writing ability with an applied hand orthosis.

Adult↗

PubMed1998

Writing arabic numerals in an agraphic patient.

We report on the writing of Arabic numerals in a patient whose alphabetical script was restricted to graphemic jargon (Schonauer & Denes, 1994). The analysis of writing errors in Arabic script over three testing sessions (4, 10, and 13 months after stroke) confirmed the separate processing of syntactic and lexical information in number production proposed by current models. The changing error pattern over time reflected some difficulties observed in developmental studies on the acquisition of Arabic numeral writing. Errors were mostly of the syntactic type and (at a certain stage) were based on the verbal form of the numerals. As reported in neuropsychological (Noel & Seron, 1995) and developmental (Power & Dal Martello, 1990; Seron & Fayol, 1994) studies, sum relations were more difficult to transcode than product relations within complex numerals.

Agraphia↗

PubMed2002

How to write an experimental research paper.

The art and practice of academic neurosurgery are mastered by defining and learning the pertinent basic principles and skills. This article aims to present general guidelines to one of the many roles of a neurosurgeon: Writing an experimental research paper. Every research report must use the "IMRAD formula: introduction, methods, results and discussion". After the IMRAD is finished, abstract should be written and the title should be "created". Your abstract should answer these questions: "Why did you start?, what did you do?, what answer did you get?, and what does it mean?". Title of the research paper should be short enough to catch glance and memory of the reader and be long enough to give the essential information of what the paper is about. Writing about the results of the experiment is no easier than the research itself. As surgery, writing a scientific paper is also an improvisation, but general principles should be learned and used in practice. The most effective style of learning basic skills to construct a research paper is the "trial and error" type.

Curriculum↗

PubMed2005

The effects of violating standard item writing principles on tests and students: the consequences of using flawed test items on achievement examinations in medical education.

The purpose of this research was to study the effects of violations of standard multiple-choice item writing principles on test characteristics, student scores, and pass-fail outcomes. Four basic science examinations, administered to year-one and year-two medical students, were randomly selected for study. Test items were classified as either standard or flawed by three independent raters, blinded to all item performance data. Flawed test questions violated one or more standard principles of effective item writing. Thirty-six to sixty-five percent of the items on the four tests were flawed. Flawed items were 0-15 percentage points more difficult than standard items measuring the same construct. Over all four examinations, 646 (53%) students passed the standard items while 575 (47%) passed the flawed items. The median passing rate difference between flawed and standard items was 3.5 percentage points, but ranged from -1 to 35 percentage points. Item flaws had little effect on test score reliability or other psychometric quality indices. Results showed that flawed multiple-choice test items, which violate well established and evidence-based principles of effective item writing, disadvantage some medical students. Item flaws introduce the systematic error of construct-irrelevant variance to assessments, thereby reducing the validity evidence for examinations and penalizing some examinees.

Choice Behavior↗

PubMed1996

Towards a psychology of literacy: on the relations between speech and writing.

A variety of graphic systems have been developed for preserving and communicating information, among them pictures, charts, graphs, flags, tartans and hallmarks. Writing systems which constitute a species of these graphic systems are distinctive in that they bear a direct relation to speech; in this paper it is argued that writing serves as a model for various properties of speech including sentences, words and for alphabets, phonemes. On this view, the history of writing and the acquisition of literacy are less matters of learning how to transcribe speech than a matter of learning to hear and think about one's own language in a new way. A number of lines of evidence are advanced to support the "model" view and the conclusion that literacy contributes to conceptual structure rather than merely reporting it.

Cognition↗

PubMed1994

The interaction of lexical and sublexical processes in reading, writing and repetition.

It has recently been proposed that in the course of repetition, reading aloud and writing to dictation, lexical representations are activated and selected for output by the joint operation of the semantic system and of sublexical conversion mechanisms--the Summation Hypothesis [Hillis and Caramazza, Brain Lang. 40, 106-144, 1991]. The hypothesis predicts that semantic errors in oral reading and in writing to dictation should only occur when both the semantic system and the sublexical component involved in that task (orthography to phonology and phonology to orthography conversion, respectively) are damaged. The performance of Italian patient E.C.A. indicates damage to the semantic system, and to sublexical phonology to phonology and phonology to orthography conversion mechanisms, but with substantial sparing of sublexical orthography to phonology conversion processes. In agreement with expectations derived from the Summation Hypothesis, E.C.A. produced semantic errors in repetition and in writing to dictation, but not in reading aloud. The paucity of semantic errors in speakers of languages with relatively transparent orthographies is discussed in the context of the Summation Hypothesis.

Aged↗

PubMed2006

Benefits of expressive writing in lowering rumination and depressive symptoms.

Depression-vulnerable college students (with both elevated prior depressive symptoms and low current depressive symptoms) wrote on 3 consecutive days in either an expressive writing or a control condition. As predicted, participants scoring above the median on the suppression scale of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003) showed significantly lower depression symptoms at the 6-month assessment when they wrote in the expressive writing versus the control condition. Additional analyses revealed that treatment benefits were mediated by changes in the Brooding but not the Reflection scale of the Ruminative Response Scale (Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991). A "booster" writing session predicted to enhance treatment benefits failed to have a significant effect.

Adolescent↗