TY - JOUR
T1 - Writing in the air
T2 - Facilitative effects of finger writing in older adults
AU - Itaguchi, Yoshihiro
AU - Yamada, Chiharu
AU - Fukuzawa, Kazuyoshi
N1 - Funding Information:
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001691 KAKENHI 18K13372 Dr. Yoshihiro Itaguchi Japan Society for the Promotion of Science http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001691 KAKENHI 18K03188 Prof. Kazuyoshi Fukuzawa The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Itaguchi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - Kusho, which refers to a behavior in which one moves the index finger as a substitute for a pen in the air or on a surface, mostly used when trying to recall the shape of a written character or the spelling of a word, has been known to facilitate cognitive task performance among kanji writing-system users. This study investigates whether the facilitative effect of kusho, the existence of which has been exclusively confirmed in younger adults, is present in old age. Moreover, to further understand the interaction between finger movement and cognitive processing, we analyzed the correlation between the kusho effect and factors such as age, mini-mental state examination (MMSE) score, and number of years of education. The kusho effect was assessed by a task where participants mentally assembled a set of kanji subparts to form an actual character. The results showed a significant facilitative effect of kusho and a strong negative correlation between kusho effect and education. This study confirms the benefits of finger movement for solving cognitive tasks involving visual processing of written language among older adults and suggests the kusho effect may be mediated by education.
AB - Kusho, which refers to a behavior in which one moves the index finger as a substitute for a pen in the air or on a surface, mostly used when trying to recall the shape of a written character or the spelling of a word, has been known to facilitate cognitive task performance among kanji writing-system users. This study investigates whether the facilitative effect of kusho, the existence of which has been exclusively confirmed in younger adults, is present in old age. Moreover, to further understand the interaction between finger movement and cognitive processing, we analyzed the correlation between the kusho effect and factors such as age, mini-mental state examination (MMSE) score, and number of years of education. The kusho effect was assessed by a task where participants mentally assembled a set of kanji subparts to form an actual character. The results showed a significant facilitative effect of kusho and a strong negative correlation between kusho effect and education. This study confirms the benefits of finger movement for solving cognitive tasks involving visual processing of written language among older adults and suggests the kusho effect may be mediated by education.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0226832
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0226832
M3 - Article
C2 - 31881067
AN - SCOPUS:85077278959
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 14
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 12
M1 - e0226832
ER -