Malgré les avancées technologiques, l’écriture manuscrite continue d’être une habileté hautement sollicitée dans le cadre scolaire et constitue en partie les bases d’une intégration et d’une participation à une vie communautaire réussie. A ce jour, l’étude de l’écriture manuscrite chez des personnes porteuses de trisomie 21 (T21) reste un domaine peu abordé par la communauté scientifique. L’objectif de cette recherche est d’étudier les habiletés d’écriture chez des enfants et adultes T21 comparativement à la population typique de même âge de développement et âge chronologique. Une tâche de copie de texte et l’écriture de lettres isolées sur une tablette graphique mettent en évidence une similarité des capacités d’écriture entre le groupe T21 et le groupe d’enfants typiques de même âge de développement. Différents facteurs individuels influençant l’écriture sont également mis en évidence parmi la coordination de la motricité fine et le contrôle visuo-moteur dans la population T21. Enfin, la présentation de lettres selon différentes modalités induit une amélioration de la fluidité et de la trajectoire d’écriture lors d’une présentation visuelle du tracé et d’instructions verbales. L’ensemble des résultats va dans le sens de l’hypothèse d’un retard de développement ne mettant pas en évidence de déficit spécifique dans la population T21. Nos résultats suggèrent de s’intéresser à l’impact de rééducations ciblées sur la coordination motrice fine et l’intégration visuo-motrice et d’un entraînement visuel et verbal pour tenter d’améliorer la trace écrite ainsi que l’exécution des mouvements d’écriture chez les personnes T21. / Despite technological advances, handwriting continues to be a highly solicited skill in the school setting and constitutes, in part, the basis of successful integration and participation in community life. To this day, the study of handwriting in people with Down syndrome (DS) remains a field of study that is not well addressed by the scientific community. The objective of the current research is therefore to study writing skills in children and adults with DS compared to mental-age-matched and chronological-age-matched typically developing population. A task of copying text and writing single cursive letters on a graphics tablet reveal similar handwriting capacities between the DS group and the group of typical children of the same developmental age. Different individual factors influencing writing are also highlighted among fine motor skill and visuo-motor control in the DS population. Finally, letters presentation in different modalities shows evidence of improvement of letter writing in fluidity and trajectory through visualization of tracing and verbal instructions. Overall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis of a developmental delay and do not underline in the DS population. Our results encourage further investigation into the impact of tasks that lend themselves to fine motor skill and visuo-motor control and also training on the trajectory of writing with the aid of visual and verbal cues in order to attempt to improvement of quality and speed of writing as well as movement execution involved in writing in persons with DS.

This thesis presents kinematic templates, end-user drawing tools that influence the mouse cursor's movement within specific areas of a digital canvas. Two types of kinematic templates influence the cursor's movement: passive and active templates. Passive templates modify existing movement received from a pointing device to change the cursor's speed or direction of one's stroke. Active templates add movement to the cursor without movement from the pointing device. Since templates are provided as user-specified regions, these regions can be associated with areas of detail and they can be overlapped as a means of function composition. [¶] A kinematic template can be configured to improve upon one's freehand output without producing perfect output. Since templates do not necessarily prescribe geometric output, they constitute a visual composition aid that lies between unaided freehand drawing and drawing aids such as snapping constraints and perfect geometric primitives. [¶] Since kinematic templates can improve upon the consistency of one's strokes, it is beneficial for drawing visual styles such as hatching (an artistic effect that adds depth to a drawing with uniform strokes drawn in close proximity) and repetitive patterns. Since kinematic templates do not prescribe a type of output, one can "fight against" a template's preferred path of movement and discover unexpected, serendipitous outcomes.

This thesis presents kinematic templates, end-user drawing tools that influence the mouse cursor's movement within specific areas of a digital canvas. Two types of kinematic templates influence the cursor's movement: passive and active templates. Passive templates modify existing movement received from a pointing device to change the cursor's speed or direction of one's stroke. Active templates add movement to the cursor without movement from the pointing device. Since templates are provided as user-specified regions, these regions can be associated with areas of detail and they can be overlapped as a means of function composition. [¶] A kinematic template can be configured to improve upon one's freehand output without producing perfect output. Since templates do not necessarily prescribe geometric output, they constitute a visual composition aid that lies between unaided freehand drawing and drawing aids such as snapping constraints and perfect geometric primitives. [¶] Since kinematic templates can improve upon the consistency of one's strokes, it is beneficial for drawing visual styles such as hatching (an artistic effect that adds depth to a drawing with uniform strokes drawn in close proximity) and repetitive patterns. Since kinematic templates do not prescribe a type of output, one can "fight against" a template's preferred path of movement and discover unexpected, serendipitous outcomes.