An Experimental Study of Writing Movements. 
By 
Charles H. Judd. 
Cincinnati. 
With 6 figures. 
The movements employed in writing are, for the most part, the 
results of individual practice. Inherited nervous structures furnish, 
to he sure, a general basis for this, as well as for other forms of 
action, but the special character of writing movements is, after all, 
determined in the main by influences that are brought into play during 
the years of practice which are generally devoted to acquiring this 
art. Writing movements are, therefore, especially suited to investi¬ 
gation by the psychologist who wishes to study the relation between 
movement and the corresponding conscious processes. 
It is the aim of this paper to report certain investigations which 
were undertaken with a view to dealing with one phase of this relation 
between movement and consciousness. The particular phase here 
treated may be defined by raising the following question: What is 
the relation of consciousness to the acquirement of the writing move¬ 
ments, and what change in this relation takes place as the movement 
becomes automatic? A difficulty in the way of a general treatment 
of this problem appears at once in the fact that there are so many 
marked individual variations in writing movements. Our investigation 
of the relation to consciousness must begin, therefore, with a pre¬ 
fatory analysis of writing movements which analysis shall point out 
the fundamental similarities hack of the apparent heterogeneity. 
The principle underlying the analysis here carried out was suggested 
by a study of the way in which the writing movement develops. If 
one observes a child he will note that in forming the letters the child 
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