VARIATIONAL FACTOR IN HANDWRITING 151 



intuitions of the graphologist. Experimental work that seeks to induce 

 variation in writing through a control of outer conditions must in time 

 correlate certain definite variations in conditions with variation in 

 such aspects of writing as size, speed, accuracy in alignment, inequality 

 of control and the like. 



The experimental investigations, spoken of above, have attacked the 

 problem at this point. Abandoning any attempt to deal with the more 

 complicated aspects of chirography as an expression of individuality, 

 they have confined themselves to an accurate analysis of such factors 

 as speed of movement and its variations ; the length and significance of 

 writing-pauses ; measurement of pressure and its variations ; comparison 

 of the accuracy of control for right and left hand ; elimination of visual 

 control; minute analysis of finger, wrist and arm movements involved 

 in handwriting, with an assignment to each of its role. Such an 

 investigation, so far as it confines itself to mere analysis, is obviously 

 but a part of the general investigation of voluntary action. But the 

 discovery of methods of accurately registering minute variations in 

 writing speed, pressure, amplitude and musculature is necessarily pre- 

 liminary to an accurate determination of the correlation between par- 

 ticular psychic traits and their expression graphically. 



An illustration of what may be expected from the perfecting of the 

 technique of registration of speed, pressure and amplitude of writing 

 is to be found in the report of a piece of work carried out some years 

 ago in a German laboratory, where it was discovered that increased dif- 

 ficulty in mental work showed itself in written expression by increased 

 pressure or by decrease in the size of the written characters. The 

 former way of meeting the difficulty seemed to be characteristic of men ; 

 the latter, characteristic of women. 



Variation in the amplitude of written characters involves doubtless 

 many important considerations relative to the facilitation and inhibi- 

 tion of movement. "Writing with attention preoccupied or distracted 

 results variously in the enlargement or dwarfing of characters, an 

 alternative result that seems to depend upon deep-seated tendencies 

 of the individual. If, as facts apparently show, the individual who is 

 the more automatic in his activities responds to distraction with an 

 increase in the size of characters used; while one less automatic, one 

 whose attention — though sometimes in a maimed condition — is always 

 at the helm, gives evidence of the mental difficulty by a decrease in 

 amplitude, a decrease that bears witness to the inhibition at work, 

 then a very simple test is at hand by means of which individuals may 

 be grouped under the two types that have been labeled, somewhat 

 ambiguously, motor and sensory. If it should be shown further that 

 this difference cuts through all the mental activities of the human 

 being, progress would have been made in the difficult matter of the 

 classification of mental types. 



