Representing the dynamics of a static form

Traditional “feature analysis” theories of letter perception do a poor job of accounting for our ability to read handwritten letters. In this paper, an alternative theory is considered: Perhaps handwriting recognition makes use of information about how letters areformed, as well as of knowledge of static characteristics of letters, such as “distinctive features.” In an experiment testing this hypothesis, subjects saw artificial characters drawn in real time and were later asked to identify distorted versions of the same characters presented statically. Subjects were faster on static characters distorted in a manner consistent with the drawing method they had witnessed than on static characters equally distorted but inconsistent with the drawing method. This finding suggests that humans can use dynamic information in the perception of static forms.