The Relationship of Certain Letter form Variants in the Handwriting of Female Subjects to their Education, I.Q. and Age

THE MODEL of good penmanship has remained the same throughout the United States for many years, despite the fact that the methods used to teach handwriting have undergone considerable change. As a result, this basic handwriting model, which has been called the "school-copy" model by Lewinson and Zubin (6), may be used as a yardstick to evaluate the tendency of individuals to deviate from what they first learned. Everyone who writes has deviated somewhat from the ' ' school-copy" form by altering the forms and size ratios of his letters in an idiosyncratic way. It is for this reason that signatures can be accepted as legal identification all over the world. Furthermore, it is the fact that each individual learns to write in a unique but consistent way which underlies the science of graphology. Two essential reasons that each individual de parts from the "school-copy" form are to achieve efficiency and speed. Naturally, the demand for legibility remains even after the demand for rigid reconstruction of the school -copy form is relaxed. Typically, handwriting is not taught to students over 14 years of age and thus, it is then that the tendency to vary accelerates. Many students crystallize their own writing styles in high school or, perhaps, in college when they are called upon J to take lecture notes at high speeds. If handwriting typically departs from the school-copy model, what then is reflected in those adult handwritings which closely adhere to, rather than depart from, the school-copy model? If we regard such samples as cases of arrested hand writing development it would seem to follow that such handwritings may also r e f 1 e ct an arrested intellectual and/or emotional development. In a recent study, Epstein and Hartford (4) found that in a group of male medical students the retention of the superfluous in it ial upstrokes on the letters u, v, w, and yl was, in fact, related to emotional immaturity. In another recent un published study, Linton, Epstein and Hartford found the use of these initial upstrokes to be as sociated "with relative inadequacy and lack of en ergy in intellectual functioning and other forms of coping with the environment. .. " In our survey of earlier graphological studies, we can find but few studie? dealing with the rela tionship between handwriting and intelligence in adult subjects. Thorndike (11) and Omwake (7) have reported virtually zero correlations between scales of handwriting quality2 and adult intelligence. These results, in effect, indicate the lack of relation ship between adult intelligence and conformity to such school-copy values as legibility, aesthetic appearance, and neatness. In children, however, since they learn to write while under strong ex ternal pressure to conform to the school-copy model, correlations of about . 30 have been found by Gesell (5) and Starch (10) between ratings of handwriting quality and general scholarship. The Thorndike and Omwake studies, in having established that adherence to school-copy values in adult handwritings is not positively related to intelligen c e , raised the further question of what departures, if any, from the school-copy might be associated with intelligence in adult subjects. A study performed by Castelnuovo-Tedesco (3) points the way. He instructed six untrained judges to rate 100 adult handwritings for intelligence and originality, separately, and then correlated these ratings with I. Q. scores. As criteria for intel ligence, the judges were told to use aesthetic spacing, handwriting speed, and the simplifica tion (and/or) deviations of the letter forms. They were told to use as the main criteria for judging originality "the extent to which the writer of a