Polymeric Foam Pressure-sensing Pens for Measuring Written Language Production

To understand human cognition, cognitive and behavioral scientists measure external behavior using a variety of tools. However, many of these tools are not sensitive enough to detect small changes in behavior, they are too costly, or they can only be used in dedicated lab space, thus limiting behavioral science from studying many populations. Here, we present a reliable, robust, cost-effective device that can measure small modulations in human handwriting behavior through pressure sensing on the writing instrument itself. This is made possible through a cross-disciplinary approach, combining advantages of new, high-sensitivity pressure sensors and experimental psycholinguistics. We show that this instrument is reliable and sensitive to the typical pressure range in writing. Then, we present a proof of concept from an experimental replication and demonstrate the utility of handwriting pressure measurement in a classic experimental paradigm, thus opening new research directions in psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and psychology.