Projects
Handwriting markers of Dementia (Alzheimer’s disease)
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. One of the potential tools for early detection of the disease is handwriting analysis. It can be a warning signal for a serious medical examination. The dynamics of handwriting changes are also a good indicator of the progression of the disease and the effectiveness of therapy. The authors have developed two such tests. The first (AD-HS) allows the assessment of handwriting markers of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease from an available handwriting sample. The second (AD-HC) is designed to assess dynamics by comparing two handwritten documents written at different times.
The pilot study involves 53 patients who had been diagnosed at different stages of the disease. They all provided old handwriting samples from 10-20 years ago and new handwriting samples specifically written as part of the experiment. Evaluation of 40 handwriting and 2 linguistic features showed that both tests were effective in identifying Alzheimer’s disease and its stage. The correlation between the handwriting analysis and the medical test result was 0.62. Further refinement of the proposed tests and expansion of the research base will enable handwriting exercises to be incorporated into supportive therapy to slow the progression of the disease. <…..>
Big Five model
Management staff
Integrity
Kuhl model
Dark triad & aggression
16PF model
In contrast to traditional researches that involve a manual, non-quantitative, and subjective way of performing handwriting analysis, in the current research, a special computer-aided method of revised handwriting analysis is used. It includes the detection of personality traits via manual quantitative registration of handwriting signs and their automated quantitative evaluation. This method is based on a mathematical–statistical model that integrates multiple international publications on the evaluation of handwriting signs. The first aim is the validation of the revised method against the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire Revised (16PF-R), which is performed as a self-report personality test by test persons and was developed and researched empirically by Raymond B. Cattell et al. A second aim is the development of an integrated model for assessment including handwriting analysis: when both methods come to the same result on a certain scale, then the construct can be accepted with higher reliability; in contrast, when results are contradictory, they should be regarded as a limitation of each method and raise awareness in the researchers, as these contradictions are a precious source of additional information regarding the complexity, ambiguity, and context specificity of personality traits.
The experiment with 58 subjects that executed 16PF-R test and provides their handwriting samples (there are samples in different languages – English, German and Russian) demonstrated a good (significant) statistical agreement for 14 scales out of 16. No scales showed statistically significant disagreement <…..>