Judging age from handwriting done with and without visual feedback

Abstract

In a prior study (Lovelace & Aikens, 1990), young and old adults wrote 10 common words with their eyes open and again with their eyes closed. The present study used writing samples from 20 old and 20 young writers (67–85 years vs. 18–24 years) in the prior study. Thirty college students judged (1) which were written with eyes closed (paired comparisons, same word written by same person) and (2) whether the writer was young or old. Both tasks were difficult; performance was significantly above chance, but not good (71% correct on open/closed, 65% on young/old, both ps