The Effect of Hand-written Letter Type on Visual Perception

This paper discusses the importance of visual perception in reading. An unusual letter type can alter the decoding, a familiar one increases the precision of recognition and shortens the processing time. The research involved twenty-four second grade children. Based on the Sindelar Cognitive Evaluation and Training Program, we created worksheets to evaluate the visual perception differences on wire-written (Hungarian-type) and on cursive-written non-words. The results showed that the children performed better on the cursive-written non-words. Hence, we advise that the teachers should choose carefully the instructional materials, when using hand-written materials from Hungary, because this could decrease the performance.