I'm convinced that different people process handwriting (and movement) differently. This is true with latin languages as well.
I think this may explain the difference between recognizing shapes versus drawing them for some people.
I remember when I was in school, some people had really neat handwriting, they could write fast and all their letters looked exactly the same with apparently little effort. On the other hand, I had to focus hard to ensure that my letters were all the same style, shape, size and slope... Also, I didn't have a single 'handwriting style' I could write in a number of different styles. I couldn't have both speed and nice looking, consistent letters; it was one or the other.
The interesting thing though is that I was always quite good at drawing... Conversely, I noticed that the people who had beautiful, effortless handwriting would typically be quite bad at drawing... They were the kinds of people who had to start out every drawing as a bunch of circles, triangles and crosses before joining them together to form the final drawing.
I feel like these people automate their hand to some extent. It's like a reflex to them. It lets them render common shapes without much thinking or effort.
It reminds me of that time I did a drawing class and the teacher kept reminding students to "stop thinking in symbols and just draw the different shapes and shades as they appear."
This probably has parallels in a number of areas like sports (e.g. tennis) where being able to offload certain movements to muscle memory can free up your brain for more strategic aspects of the sport.
This also reminds me of Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking fast and slow." I suspect it would be interesting to try to categorize people based on what kinds of mental activities they offload to system 1 vs system 2 thinking.
I think this may explain the difference between recognizing shapes versus drawing them for some people.
I remember when I was in school, some people had really neat handwriting, they could write fast and all their letters looked exactly the same with apparently little effort. On the other hand, I had to focus hard to ensure that my letters were all the same style, shape, size and slope... Also, I didn't have a single 'handwriting style' I could write in a number of different styles. I couldn't have both speed and nice looking, consistent letters; it was one or the other.
The interesting thing though is that I was always quite good at drawing... Conversely, I noticed that the people who had beautiful, effortless handwriting would typically be quite bad at drawing... They were the kinds of people who had to start out every drawing as a bunch of circles, triangles and crosses before joining them together to form the final drawing.
I feel like these people automate their hand to some extent. It's like a reflex to them. It lets them render common shapes without much thinking or effort.
It reminds me of that time I did a drawing class and the teacher kept reminding students to "stop thinking in symbols and just draw the different shapes and shades as they appear."
This probably has parallels in a number of areas like sports (e.g. tennis) where being able to offload certain movements to muscle memory can free up your brain for more strategic aspects of the sport.
This also reminds me of Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking fast and slow." I suspect it would be interesting to try to categorize people based on what kinds of mental activities they offload to system 1 vs system 2 thinking.