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I think there’s a certain “muscle memory” involved. When you’re writing a word by hand you have to think about each letter, however briefly, as you write it: “w

I think there’s a certain “muscle memory” involved. When you’re writing a word by hand you have to think about each letter, however briefly, as you write it: “w-o-r-d”. But when you’re typing a word you don’t think about each letter so much as you think about the pattern your fingers need to make, if that makes sense? It’s like when someone asks what the keyboard shortcut is to take a screenshot. Uh, I don’t know? I use it all the time and I couldn’t tell you if I’m hitting control or command or option because the underlying inputs don’t really matter. I only need to know the pattern my fingers are supposed to make and so that’s all that gets committed to memory.

wenc 5y ago
That's a neat observation. Each handwritten letter requires distinct motor skills (manipulating pen angles, pressure etc.), whereas each keyboard-typed letter requires a much smaller set of nearly identical motor skills (just a "tap").
- echelon 5y ago
  It goes beyond that, I think. As you're planning what to write, you come up with shorthand because it's hard to keep up with a speaker by hand. Summarizing requires much more active listening, analysis, and synthesis. There's a lot more going on in your brain than when typing.
3pt14159 5y ago
Excellent insight. Thank you. Since listening to a Lex Fridman podcast on how one hemisphere of the brain is more devoted to language than the other, I've been thinking about just how complex language is. I've never agreed with some linguists like Chomsky that speak about language as necessary for thought, mostly because my own mental language is far more physical and symbolic than linguistic. At one point in my life, for example, I was able to look at construction drawings and point to the weakest part of a structural system. That's not my brain using language. That's something else. That said, something that just occurred to me after reading your comment is this: Over time we're having to translate this communication thing into different arenas. My fingers have memorized how to type most words. I wouldn't be able to type as fast as I do if they didn't. My eyes and brain have obviously memorized words at a glance. My ears have memorized words in person, which sound different than they do from a computer or television. They've also memorized the sound of words from 0.5x speed to 3x speed because of all the podcasts I listen to. I guess where I'm going with this is that we're putting larger and larger demands on our brains. The, oh what to call it, increasing dimensionality of communication? That, whatever that is, it feels so mentally taxing and I can't imagine that is ever going away. If anything it will continue to increase as societies and technologies get more complex.
pkaye 5y ago
In college I used to handwrite out all my notes and prepare cheat sheets for tests but I would never refer back to them. Just the action of writing them out helped me to remember things much better than my normally lousy memory.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

wenc 5y ago

That's a neat observation. Each handwritten letter requires distinct motor skills (manipulating pen angles, pressure etc.), whereas each keyboard-typed letter requires a much smaller set of nearly identical motor skills (just a "tap").

echelon 5y ago
It goes beyond that, I think. As you're planning what to write, you come up with shorthand because it's hard to keep up with a speaker by hand. Summarizing requires much more active listening, analysis, and synthesis. There's a lot more going on in your brain than when typing.

3pt14159 5y ago

Excellent insight. Thank you. Since listening to a Lex Fridman podcast on how one hemisphere of the brain is more devoted to language than the other, I've been thinking about just how complex language is. I've never agreed with some linguists like Chomsky that speak about language as necessary for thought, mostly because my own mental language is far more physical and symbolic than linguistic. At one point in my life, for example, I was able to look at construction drawings and point to the weakest part of a structural system. That's not my brain using language. That's something else. That said, something that just occurred to me after reading your comment is this: Over time we're having to translate this communication thing into different arenas. My fingers have memorized how to type most words. I wouldn't be able to type as fast as I do if they didn't. My eyes and brain have obviously memorized words at a glance. My ears have memorized words in person, which sound different than they do from a computer or television. They've also memorized the sound of words from 0.5x speed to 3x speed because of all the podcasts I listen to. I guess where I'm going with this is that we're putting larger and larger demands on our brains. The, oh what to call it, increasing dimensionality of communication? That, whatever that is, it feels so mentally taxing and I can't imagine that is ever going away. If anything it will continue to increase as societies and technologies get more complex.

pkaye 5y ago

In college I used to handwrite out all my notes and prepare cheat sheets for tests but I would never refer back to them. Just the action of writing them out helped me to remember things much better than my normally lousy memory.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]