Visual detection of coarticulatory anticipation or...guessing what has not yet been written

A phenomenon observed in speech and cursive handwriting is discussed, namely, the visual detection of a coarticulatory anticipation. The contribution of visible motor information in linguistic message decoding is examined. Visual dynamic and static digram and word stimuli prepared by reproducing identical spatial templates, and on the basis of the presence of coarticulatory anticipation in the handwriting movements are administered without providing spatial cues on the identity of the subsequent letter. Results indicate that when kinematic information is provided in the dynamic visual stimulus, subjects are able to predict with fair accuracy the identity of the following letter. When the only information supplied by the stimulus is the static trace of the production, subjects cannot predict the identity of the following one. Therefore, the visual system detects temporal differences that translate anticipatory gestures in the handwriting movements