The Writing in Early Mesopotamia (WEM) project endeavors to provide a comprehensive description of how the technology of cuneiform writing represented language. The project will investigate early cuneiform writing from the perspective of both language — how sound and meaning are systematically expressed diachronically and synchronically — and semiotics — the graphic organization and history of ...

Cuneiform is an ancient form of writing in which wooden reeds were used to impress shapes upon moist clay tablets. Upon drying, the tablets preserved the written script with remarkable accuracy and durability. There are currently hundreds of thousands of cuneiform tablets spread throughout the world in both museums and private collections. The global scale of these artifacts presents several pr...

This study develops a self-generated drawing environment for the support of young children’s writing and storytelling skill through the implementation of drawing, writing, and storytelling activities. In particular, each student used a tablet PC to share a story and drawings based on written text. An experiment was conducted in a primary school with 116 1st grade students from four classes (div...

The percentage of people who produce a neat and clear handwriting is declining sharply. The traditional approach for handwriting teaching is to have a dedicated teacher for long hours of handwriting practice. Unfortunately, this is not feasible in many cases. In this paper we introduce an automated tool for teaching Arabic handwriting using tablet PCs and on-line handwriting recognition techniq...

BACKGROUND Recent studies show that besides freezing of gait (FOG), many people with Parkinson's disease (PD) also suffer from freezing in the upper limbs (FOUL). Up to now, it is unclear which task constraints provoke and explain upper limb freezing. OBJECTIVE To investigate whether upper limb freezing and other kinematic abnormalities during writing are provoked by (i) gradual changes in am...

The role of two different layouts of school furniture was investigated in the pattern legibility and spatial-temporal parameters of a graphic skill acquisition. Thirty children from the first grade of elementary school (mean age = 6 years) practiced a graphic task according to a criterion figure. They were assigned to two groups, Group of Fixed School Desk (GF) and Group with Adjustable School ...

Purpose: Writing performance can be improved in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) by providing the visual cues. This study aimed to investigate changes pen pressure, letter size, and writing speed as per levels of cues.Methods: Sixty-three participants (38 PD 25 normal adults) performed tasks, including sentence along cue using a tablet personal computer, digital pen, software that could m...

Studies of three original rongorongo tablets (Tahua, Aruku Kurenga and Mamari) revealed clear traces of two-stage carving (pre-incising with an obsidian flake and contour enhancement with a shark tooth). Most probably, the texts were written in short fragments with shark-tooth engraving applied before passing to the next fragment. Additional multiple engraving sessions might been performed for ...

OBJECTIVES Basal ganglia dysfunction is supposed to play a part in the pathophysiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). A new computer aided technique for the analysis of hand movements, allowing the detection of subtle motor performance abnormalities, was applied in this study of patients with OCD and healthy controls. METHODS Using a digitising graphic tablet, hand motor performance ...