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Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity
- andy_xor_andrew 3y agoThis smells true to me, though I couldn't exactly explain why. (baseless speculation below) One thing I've noticed is how drastically my handwriting (and maybe hand dexterity in general) varies wildly from hour to hour, mostly depending on how tired I am or how much caffeine I've had. If I'm feeling tired and sluggish, my handwriting is a disaster. It doesn't look good. It doesn't feel good. But after some caffeine, or otherwise becoming more alert, suddenly it looks better, and it feels much better as I do it. Is this just me? I guess it's not surprising that caffeine would have an impact like this. But the part that's surprising to me is how pronounced and reliable it is.
- bee_rider 3y agoI’m pretty sure this is something that is widely suspected but hard to measure.
- echelon 3y agoI wish we could quantify this. Handwriting things results in much better retention for me, but the notes are useless. Typed notes are a fantastic, easily edited artifact, but I feel the practice actually lowers my overall comprehension. I want to concretely know if this is true, or just some weird bias. I also want a tool that works well with both human memory and editability/searchability.
- bee_rider 3y agoI’m sure there’s a smartphone app or something like that out there, to snapshot your notes and digitize them.
- ambichook 3y agorocketbooks are built around this exactly, theyre supposed to be reusable notebooks that you write in with one of those erasable pens and at the end of the day you get your phone and scan each page and erase them all ready for the next day
- iimblack 3y agoYes I’d love to hear if anybody found any good note taking apps that do good ocr and that lets the notes be organized and tagged afterwards zettelkasten style.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- giraffe_lady 3y agoI suspect it's an embodied cognition thing. There is a very similar experience in musicians, where it's much much more difficult to reason about theory away from your instrument. Even simple trivia type questions like "what's the V chord in F" are on basically instant recall for an experienced musician but without your instrument you have to stop and think (possibly even picturing your hands on your instrument) to answer.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- spaboleo 3y agoI am wondering for a long time whether this differs from person to person based on their preferred mode of thinking. As a seemingly overly visual thinker the aspect of making several small decisions about how to layout what I'm writing down by hand also seems to play a huge role in that. I have to make positioning and thereby spacing and sizing decisions, choose the color, as well as making decisions on in what style (caps, cursive, script) I write each letter. I can easily use graphical elements like lines, arrows, boxes, etc. Anything created digitally by primarily typing will always have a more dynamic and flowing nature, while following the linearity of the typed sequence of characters. It takes away a lot of the decisions that I have to make when laying out a handwritten note. Anecdotally, I seem to remember mindmaps created with digital tools that rearrange elements automatically based on available space much less than hand-drawn ones. Yet, those come with their own downsides.
- boopmaster 3y agoWhen taking notes by hand from a lecture, all I can really focus on is the typography. As in, will I be able to recognize this later? Maybe the repeated parsing and checking for legibility is the foil that improves memory retention!
- magicalhippo 3y agoFor me it's just the act of writing. When preparing for an exam I would write tons of notes on paper, but I hardly read them. The act of writing on paper was enough. I tried skipping the paper but typing notes didn't have close to the same effect, by an order of magnitude or two. I still do this in meetings with customers and similar, keeping a small notebook. I'll write down key points, but I very seldom have to reference it later.
- nottorp 3y agoPerhaps just slowing down to handwriting speed is enough to trigger retention? Would be interesting to know if people who take shorthand notes (they still do that at trials?) remember what they've written.
- magicalhippo 3y agoFor me I feel like it's the additional processing required, not the speed. I'm not a super-fast typist, but do write quite quick by hand, so speed difference isn't great.
- SoftTalker 3y agoFor me my handwriting varies wildly based on what writing instrument I'm using. Fountain pen? Pretty good writing. Ball point pen? Pretty sloppy writing. Pencil? Somewhere in between, depending on what sort of pencil.
- Dalewyn 3y agoAs someone whose handwriting is a disaster all day every day, the amount of coffee I would need to reach competency would kill me.
- Izkata 3y agoTo a limited extent I could see getting this result too, but from what I remember during school it wasn't the writing, it was the paper: I used spacial memory to remember which page and what location on the page something was at, instead of remembering the thing directly. And I could do it with things in textbooks I'd only read, not written.
- zharknado 3y agoThey didn’t test learning at all; they tested writing a word or typing a word based on a Pictionary prompt. I’m not a research scientist, but it seems like you could look at this evidence and just as easily conclude that writing by hand increases the extraneous load for learners, i.e. that the task of writing itself requires more attention or “mental bandwidth” which would be diverted away from whatever you’re hoping they will learn. I’d like to know if there’s evidence against this alternative explanation.
- kristo 3y agoAlso, these university students are likely far more used to typing than handwriting
- block_dagger 3y agoI think this is an extremely important point and would almost definitely bias the results of the study.
- hot_gril 3y agoThey used to say that the act of writing on the test will remind you of writing notes. But now a lot of tests are also typewritten. Also, that sounds like a cramming strategy; I'd rather just learn the material for real.
- spaboleo 3y agoIn this study they observed specific patterns that previously were attributed to learning and remembering. > "The present findings suggest that the intricate and precisely controlled handwriting movements have a beneficial impact on the brain’s connectivity patterns related to learning and remembering." But you are right, they do not directly _prove_ that handwriting yields a greater learning effect.
- SamBam 3y agoWhich would actually be the easier experiment to run. No messy electrodes.
- ravivooda 3y agoI agree with the sentiment here, but I couldn't find a way to scale when working with others over async document communication channels. However, I did a self experiment and realized using markdown in electronic communication, google docs (even if its not supported) is much better at create a mind map of knowledge than regular text. I don't know why. My current ranking model is: 1. Is this knowledge for me? Write in a notepad. Upload a screenshot to my personal rambling google doc. 2. Is this knowledge for a group that includes me? Use markdown text files (READMEs, Google Doc etc.) 3. Resort to Wiki or a Rich Text Editor.
- _hao 3y agoAnecdotal info for myself - I learn by far most efficiently when I write on paper. Here's an interesting quote from "How to learn mathematics - The asterisk method"[0] around that: > Copying material by hand is important because this forces the ideas to go through the mind. The mind is on the path between the eyes and the hands. So when you copy something, it must go through your mind! For me this is definitely true. Maybe it's like that because when I was growing up we still didn't have smartphones, tablets and widespread computer use at schools and everything was written on paper with a pen/pencil. Most children and young people today probably don't use such tools as much as we did? With that said, I do believe there's something very real in the tactile and spatial feeling of writing on paper that does help learning and greatly improves memorising information. For myself it is definitely true. Maybe for a child today that would be an alien feeling? No idea. I'd be curious to read an actual research on something like this. [0]:http://www.geometry.org/tex/conc/mathlearn.html http://www.geometry.org/tex/conc/mathlearn.html
- contravariant 3y agoThat quote doesn't quite explain the difference between writing and typing. Both use your hands after all. What probably makes the most difference between the two is thinking about what you are writing. No matter how. Typing is likely to have the same effect provided you're not simply blindly copying stuff. A more powerful effect that you hint at is the fact that writing by hand transfers the information to a physical location. You remove a layer of abstraction between your memory and what you've written down (yes we try to tie virtual stuff to a 'location' as well, but quite a lot of problems can be explained by people struggling with that abstraction).
- _hao 3y ago> That quote doesn't quite explain the difference between writing and typing. Both use your hands after all. True. Although the article is about writing on paper. I'm a pretty good touch typist and years of Vim have made me efficient with the keyboard. My typing is much faster than my writing. I'd say that even if I am thinking deeply about a subject, if I'm copying the text via typing, it I'll be a lot faster than writing. On the other hand writing gives me the opportunity to slow down. Maybe you're right that both should work equally if I'm invested mentally in the material, but then I'll have the internal pressure to type faster which might hurt that. As a physical motion typing is rather static when compared to writing, so I do believe an actual difference exists.
- sandworm101 3y agoEven more connectivity might be gained by writing while riding a bicycle, or being chased by a lion while typing out your thesus. If brain connectivity is the goal, any increase in complication should work. Texting while driving probably increases brain connectivity. That doesnt mean it should be encouraged.
- brailsafe 3y agoOddly hostile take about writing on paper and bicycling
- tomrod 3y agoThat's how I roll. Bring on the bike pens!
- rpmisms 3y agoI only do both of those things because I enjoy them. Don't make me do either, please.
- etrautmann 3y ago
- Werewolf255 3y agoSorry everyone, but this doesn't pass the smell test for me. Over half of their citations are for research that's 20-40 years old, and their more contemporary citations are from papers the authors themselves published in the last ten years.
- ethanwillis 3y ago20 years ago is the year 2004.
- blondin 3y agoimagine that!
- samatman 3y agoHard agree. The test protocol is one step removed from a Scientology e-meter and the prose makes it crystal-clear that these 'researchers' are seeking to confirm their biases. No way this replicates.
- smingo 3y agoNot so sure that's fair. There are papers cited from 2016 that are from other authors.
- tgv 3y agoThis isn't genetics. There's not much research in these areas. And a lot of it would be unrelated to the current article. There's also very little progress, if any. You really have to do better than "a smell test" based on some superficial judgement.
- dylan604 3y agoOver and over this gets posted here. Next, someone will dig up yet another version of being active will also help memory retention. That'll get followed by the correlation of smells with memory retention. I can't remember which toga wearing philosopher it was, but he was known for taking his talks for a walk. Just a hint for someone else to make another post about. I get it, somebody is today's 1 in 10000. I'm just trying to get them all in one place
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- waterhouse 3y agoProbably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school is the one, certainly based on the name.
- peterleiser 3y agoProbably because it's been an active subject of research for decades. Search for "learning by writing things down". Not the only way to learn, obviously, since all of us also routinely learn by reading, listening, watching, experimenting, etc.
- math_dandy 3y agoI’m not convinced you can draw any legitimate conclusions about learning, cognition, memory, etc. from EEG activity.
- shermantanktop 3y agoI have a feeling this article is going viral amongst the Facebook crowd. Everyone over a certain age loves hearing how things really were better in the old days. There may be merit to the research, or not; but that's not how the "popular" part of popular science works.
- HermitX 3y agoTyping can only get faster, but handwriting can get better. I myself also like to think while writing, and it indeed helps me. Of course, after writing, I will take a photo and save it to iCloud, or simply retype it into Google Docs.
- yeknoda 3y agoGuess that makes me a dumbass.
- hintymad 3y agoWow, I thought it was just me: when learning a new language, I found that handwriting clearly enhanced my retention more than typing. I also noticed that when learning math, handwriting enhanced my understanding more than typing, but I thought it was because typing latex was distracting.
- magicalhippo 3y agoI found the same during uni, and I didn't find the LaTeX distracting. Manipulating equations with pen and paper is just in a different league to typing, LaTeX or not.
- ChuckMcM 3y agoThat is a fun paper to read. Anecdotally I found early on that actually writing my thoughts in a notebook was, for me, a much better way of developing and retaining knowledge.
- napierzaza 3y ago[dead]
- Fervicus 3y agoI want to write on paper more often, but one thing that keeps me from doing that is the feeling of a loss of privacy. I encrypt my notes on the computer. I like knowing that no one can read it - now or even when I am dead. Any suggestions?
- rileyphone 3y ago1. Adopt handwriting that is essentially illegible 2. Burn notes periodically 3. Accept that they may be read at some point, and write anyways
- doctoboggan 3y agoWrite, scan, encrypt, shred.
- justrealist 3y agoSSRIs.
- pfdietz 3y agoWhy are you concerned what would be read when you are dead?
- SkyMarshal 3y agoI wonder if writing with a stylus/e-pencil on tablet stimulates the same brain activity as handwriting, but with electronic privacy. (Unfortunately Remarkable doesn't support device encryption, so it's not an option: https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Does-reMarkable-offer-device-encryption-or-full-end-to-end-encryption https://support.remarkable.com/s/article/Does-reMarkable-off...)
- rayrey 3y agoThis I take notes in a journal when I have client meetings. I retain a lot because of that, even if I never look at the notes again.
- sdht0 3y agoMaybe we can get the best of both worlds by taking hand written notes on a tablet?
- dambi0 3y agoIt could just as well be the worst of both world too though. Loss of physicality and constraints because of unlimited virtual paper combined with notes you can’t read because of handwriting. I prefer your optimism though.
- mattlondon 3y agoMost tablet note taking apps I've seen transcribe the hand written notes to text. I recently bought an android tablet with proper wacom stylus support and active stylus for my 4 year old kid to practice writing (...they want to do it with the tablet, but don't want to on paper...I figure any practice is better than nothing). The active stylus is very good, but I can't imagine using it for any serious amount of writing - it just feels too weird.
- daxfohl 3y agoI once believed this since there were so many articles written over and over about it over the years. Religiously refused type notes. Handwriting only. Carried notebooks everywhere, the only person in a meeting handwriting notes. Could never find anything again long after I wrote it, or took way too long to look it up. Idiotically transcribing my notes into emails to send off as meeting notes. Switched to typing everything, even stream-of-consciousness stuff for myself, a couple years ago and would never want to go back. Feel quite foolish for falling for this for so long.
- throwanem 3y agoWhat was your indexing practice?
- sublinear 3y agoI'm curious about this too. In the heyday of handwritten notes it wasn't so different from how we organize files on computers today. After all where do we think those common fields came from? Timestamps, data blocks, pages, tags/keywords, etc. Notes are front-to-back and empty space on pages is minimal (especially pocket notebooks). Regions of the pages are broken into numbered blocks. Index is written back-to-front with each entry containing at least a timestamp and block number. Keywords, if you can fit them, greatly enhances searchability. I'd love to know of any books written about this topic.
- throwanem 3y agoSo would I. A regular topic-to-page-number index has served for about 1500 pages of work notes since ~2018, but my personal journal's quite a bit longer and I lacked the foresight to index that from the start. It's not that I mind an excuse to reread in detail, but I'd like to begin as I mean to go on and I just haven't come up with a way to do it that looks maintainable.
- sublinear 3y agoMy indexes are probably a bit harder to read than topic-to-page. I don't group anything when I'm writing and just stick to a more or less consistent set of general keywords per entry. Each index entry is its own numbered row. Index entries may need their own numbers so I can come back later to group. I may not even index if I'm really rushed until later as long as I mark my regions I can index it all later. Not hard to count them up. An example of an index entry: "56 2024-02-13@22:30 39.1 hn" where the format is: "<index entry #> <timestamp> <page #>.<region #> <keyword>" I would have to linearly search if I haven't yet updated my groups in a meta index that spans notebooks e.g. "showerthoughts: 3.30.3 9.42.1 10.3.2 ... " where the format is <book #>.<page #>.<region #> or more concisely <book #>.<index #> I've done both before. I prefer the latter when my index has lots of columns that are more helpful (such as bigger notebooks and I always label my columns so I don't confuse myself because not all my notebooks are the same format depending on size). There's always time for indexing and metaindexing later and I find it relaxing. Sort of like washing the dishes. It's a discipline thing, but doesn't have to be perfect. If I had a bunch of old unindexed books I'd start by just broadly labeling the books first (mostly/all school, mostly/all work, mostly/all personal, etc.) and then lazily drill down into pages and regions and keywords as I actually need the info. Just as long as I didn't waste the effort I took to find things the hard way and be sure to index it's better than no index at all... wabi-sabi and all that. Also worth pointing out I don't have separate books for topics. Fuck that it's going on whatever paper I've got on hand and I've even stuck loose pages into books later. As long as the actual content has matching numbers on it (in the corner) the index will keep track. I number it according to where I'm gonna stick it or just n+1 non-loose soon-to-no-longer-be-blank pages/regions. I truly treat paper like disk space and write whatever whenever. It really freed me to think that way. If the index is lost it's not unrecoverable either, just tedious. Pretty sure I picked up the habit of decimal numbering in like the 3rd grade. I had teachers whose assignments were like that: <assignment #>.<problem #> i.e. "Did you turn in homework 5.1 through 7.15? No?! You're going to the office if you can't sit in the hall to finish it by the end of class!" Thought all teachers were like that.
- BirAdam 3y agoThis feels a lot like the Mozart Effect junk science.
- kstenerud 3y agoThis smells a lot like "Past research has demonstrated that squashing grapefruits between your hands increases crucial muscular development in the arms of children. Therefore, we recommend that schools incorporate 'grapefruit squashing' into their curriculum." I'll bet dollars to donuts that there are myriad ways to increase these connectivity markers in the brain without such laborious processes.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agoi beg to differ. if you want to write something down only three options come to mind: dictating with speech recognition, typing and handwriting. that's not analogous to asking what fruit or vegetable should children squish to develop forearm strength ... dictating i just added because it's technically an option. typing and handwriting are very different experientially.
- drewcoo 3y agoSo based on that and my own personal data, the not-so-smart kids in the 1970s had "more brain connectivity" than the reasonably-smart kids. They can keep their "brain connectivity!" I'm sticking with block caps.
- httpz 3y agoGreek philosopher Plato argued, writing implants forgetfulness. I think in another couple thousand years, we're going to go full-circle on this.. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/259062-if-men-learn-this-it-will-implant-forgetfulness-in-their https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/259062-if-men-learn-this-it...
- Linda231 3y ago[dead]
- belhassen2 3y agoIntuitively this is obvious. how can you compare multi dimension freedom with linear imposed thought? White paper and a pen is a freedom climax. Drawing , just unrolling and creating thoughts in live mode without constraint is a pleasure. A line and a paragraph? compared to drawing? Pen is a extension of the mind. This article may face obvious biaised reception.
- LuciBb 3y ago[dead]
- vicktorium 3y agoi sort of specialize in meta cognition(zettelkasten, spaced repetition, incremental reading, speed reading etc) i believe the effects of writing by hand are so maginal you would re-gain it by not having to re-type your notes. putting them into spaced repetition etc. just make everything digital and then OCR the rest.
- eviks 3y agoTo get more brain activity, you can also talk and dance during handwriting, but that extra effort will be detrimental for your memory Just like in the other HN link on the supposed benefits of handwriting where the only benefit was it was too slow to follow the lecture, so students had to think more to staircase, and summarizing is beneficial
- the-mitr 3y agoFor young children the problem of writing with hand is twofold. First there is not enough motor control, children spend anywhere between 2-4 years to learn "good" handwriting. Some never get this even as adults. The physical strain of writing with hand is so much that there is no scope for reviewing or editing it, making it better. In fact it is given as a punishment "write this 100 times!". As adults we typically use typed stuff which we can edit, review and rewrite with much ease using word/text processors. This allows cognitive as well as physical affordance for the users. Now young children, by forcing them to handwrite, are denied both these affordances. Typing allows children to overcome the physical aspect of typing and focus on the content. I have had first graders touch-type in both Devanagari and Roman scripts just with 3-4 months of accessing the One Laptop Per Child. This immensely increased their vocabulary as well as expressiveness. When asked to handwrite the same, they would struggle even to construct simple sentences. Handwriting is a technology which was crucial in the past because we did not have a better alternative. Now that we have better alternatives they should be promoted and used. Studies like these muddy the waters. Did the authors of the study themselves only used handwriting to do this study themselves because it is beneficial ? Or they did use typing on a computer?
- magicalhippo 3y ago> The physical strain of writing with hand is so much As a teacher my grandfather had a special fondness for teaching handwriting. He read literature on it and conducted his own experiments using his pupils, trying to figure out what worked and what didn't. One of the things I recall vividly is him explaining to me as I started school, how it was vastly beneficial to use thick pencils when first learning to write by hand. He gave me, as he gave his students, a pencil he preferred which as I recall had a diameter about 1.5x a regular pencil. It was also slightly softer, around 2B. As I recall his explanation was that the larger pencil required less motor skill precision, which lead to more relaxed fingers hence reduced strain. The softer graphite also required less pressure, again reducing strain. As I recall he had found the reduction in strain really helped kids get comfortable with writing by hand.
- animal_spirits 3y ago
- iisan7 3y agoTaking notes is compression of facts or ideas that are "full size" in the mind at the moment of reception. More fidelity when typing, lower compression ratio, and thus better for comprehensive reference; a personalized textbook. Handwriting is intensive, slow, but potentially powerful compression that is much more lossy but capable of transmitting more bits of important information per page. Tradeoffs can be minimized by the ability to graph and edit page layout creatively while typing.
- animal_spirits 3y agoFor me, writing with pen and paper provides my brain a physical anchor point, a real idea stored in time and space. I find much more connection to my writings when I know where it exists in a physical space, and where I was in a physical space when I wrote it. Digital doesn’t have that anchor point for me, it just goes “up in the cloud”, far and away where the sprites and fairies live. My most profound personal growth happened because of writing with pen, being able to diagram and have the flexibility of 2d space on a paper rather than 1d ish space on a word processor. That doesn’t mean I keep everything written down on paper, though. Usually just journals. Also I find that because writing is slower than the brain it forces me to summarize my thoughts into less words, reducing the informational complexity… making it succinct and understandable
- crazygringo 3y agoI know lots of people swear that handwriting helps them with retention, but for me it's the polar opposite and always has been. I hate writing with my hand. Hate it. It's slow, it's friction, and I have to pay attention to writing instead of thinking. To back up and dot my i's, whether I can cram another word on this line or not, do I need to slow down to be more legible or speed up to catch up? Ugh is my hand cramping? If I'm writing, I'm thinking about writing rather than thinking about the thing. You might as well be asking me to listen and waterski at the same time. It's not gonna help. I love typing. It's effortless and fast and I can do it without thinking (or looking), so I'm actually thinking about the content of what I'm writing. If I'm taking notes by hand in a lecture, I simply will not remember most of the lecture because I was too distracted by the mechanical process of writing it down. If I'm typing out notes, it's totally fine -- I pay attention perfectly, maybe even better because I've even got it outlined in sections. I've always been baffled at how some people remember things better with writing. Are they better at multitasking? Are they bad at typing? Is writing just easier for them than it is for me? Is it something about muscle tension in the hand?
- galangalalgol 3y agoI'm right there with you. I can type faster than I can think, with very little effort. But I can't write and think at the same time. If I took handwritten notes in class, I didn't remember anything that was said. And I couldn't keep up, and it was illegible so I got nothing. Just listening was far better for me. I didn't know it in college, but I'd been diagnosed with dysgraphia as a very young child and was never told. Do an image search for adult dysgraphia handwriting examples. From your description I'd surprised if you couldn't find an example that was very close to yours. Like most learning differences it comes with some strengths, but knowing what advice doesn't apply to you is important.
- pprotas 3y agoIf we take into account that the average person types less than 80 WPM (and that’s being generous) using a pecking technique and by looking at the keyboard, I can definitely understand how the average person would prefer writing over typing. After all, the same complaints that you have about writing apply to their typing technique. They think more about typing and which key to press, rather than the content.
- steventhedev 3y agoYet another study comparing handwriting with one handed typing. Actually worse than that - they didn't even display the letters typed. Even if that were somehow ok, they should have seen greater visual engagement for hunt and peck one finger typing (exclusively right index finger). No mention in their methodology if they allowed students to practice the one word they gave them to write five times either, which further pollutes the data. Bottom line - poorly designed study produces predictable results and researchers use that soapbox to suggest educational policy.
- gubikmic 3y agoCan't take this seriously when there's zero mention of whether the participants are able to touch type or not
- adrian_b 3y agoThe study should have compared handwriting not only with typewriting, but also with drawing, in order to reach a useful conclusion. Practicing handwriting as a child is certainly useful for developing fine control of hand movements, but practicing other similar activities, like drawing, carving etc. might be the same or even better. I believe that since the beginning it may be better to use typewriting for doing useful work, but practicing in parallel calligraphy may be as useful as practicing various sports, for developing the ability of doing delicate manual work, like reworking a prototype electronic device.
- kyykky 3y agoI force my students to turn in handwritten math homework (two problems per week), mainly because I want them to practice for the exam and we don't have another system scaling (easily) up to 300+ exam goers. Recently I have seen more discussion on the benefits of handwriting and I wonder if there is something more to argue for the practice...
- zoom6628 3y agoMy own experience over decades has been hand write that which must be remembered or understood longer term. Everything else is temporal so quickly type into searchable notes.
- yread 3y agoI wonder how much of that activity is "gee I wish I had a computer with dammit"
- maxk42 3y agoAnecdotally: I've been taking notes by hand recently after years of taking notes via text file. My personal experience has been a noticeable increase in retention and reduced need to go back to the notes I've taken and refresh my memory. I believe there is some unknown process that leads to improves memorization in the act of writing things down by hand.
- 15457345234 3y ago> I believe there is some unknown process that leads to improves memorization in the act of writing things down by hand. It isn't exactly 'unknown' - every teacher I've ever met has said 'if you write it down you'll remember it better' and Tom Clancy made 'if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen' a major plot point in one of his novels. Perhaps 'unexplained' would be a better word.
- joelegner 3y agoThe human body seems to be designed to talk. Talking is generally learned automatically. Reading and writing are not automatic. Talking also has nuances that are lost in transcription. Maybe the more a recording act resembles talking, the better. My vague hypothesis then is this: the body has finite energy. Energy that goes into one thing has an opportunity cost. If handwriting takes more energy than typing, it is taking away from something else. And as we consider which recording method to use, it might make sense to use the one that lights up not the motor areas controlling the hand but instead the regions of the brain where discursive knowledge lives. We want stronger connections between ideas, not between ideas and hand motions. Incidentally for the past year or so I’ve been recording many voice memos to myself. It’s kind of fun even. I can just talk while I’m walking. The trouble with recordings is consuming them is not as easy.
- LIzzyytujghf 3y ago[dead]
- muhammadnasir 3y ago[flagged]
- muhammadnasir 3y ago[flagged]
- iammjm 3y agoMy preferred way of taking notes is via e-ink tablet with pen using Swipe, which seems like a weird hybrid of handwriting and typing. Should I expect "positive" effects similar to writing via hand or rather that of typing?
- camgunz 3y agoI got through undergrad just by taking notes in lectures and while I read; I almost never needed to study (some math stuff excepted). It's become a useful skill in life; notating discussions, meetings, etc. People are generally low-key worried you're goofing off when you're typing away on your computer, but if you're taking notes on a notepad it's obvious you're engaged. I'm a good typist so, I type everything else. If I'm doing meeting notes for others even, I type those. But I definitely remember way, way less.
- LoveMortuus 3y ago>our findings can be taken as evidence that handwriting promotes learning. I don't like the way this is written. I much prefer a more ambiguous wording like, "our finding indicate that handwriting promotes learning." Because the way it's written in the article, it sounds like that's the definitive truth, which it usually isn't. Life isn't black or white, it's a shade of gray. But it is a really interesting article, because that's something that I always wonder when taking notes and such. But since I like the feel of the pen touching paper. I've leaned more towards that way. I have even bought ReMarkable 2 tablet for that reason (I don't own it any more though, as I was always slightly afraid to write on, just because of how expensive the device was - when compared to non-digital alternatives). >In the present study, participants only used their right index finger for typing to prevent undesired crossover effects between the two hemispheres. To me, this seems like quite an important factor, I hope that further studies will take typing with both hands into consideration as well.
- carefulfungi 3y ago> b) type the presented word using the right index finger on the keyboard The intro states they type one-fingered to avoid hard-to-interpret brain activity and then they draw conclusions as broad as "handwriting promotes learning" because using a pen activates more of the brain that hunt-and-pecking with one finger? Sure - start with the doable and learn a little. But the breadth of conclusion here is seriously questionable vs. the method of the experiment.
- stavros 3y agoWow: > In the present study, participants only used their right index finger for typing to prevent undesired crossover effects between the two hemispheres. "We didn't want to see too much brain activity".
- chamorim21 3y agoThe participants of the study use only right index finger to typewrite in the experiments. I don't think it's fair to compare it with handwriting. Usually when you are handwriting, you hardly use both hands. So it's like a natural way to do it. However, I don't know anyone that typewrite using just their right index finger. I think it would generate more compatible with reality results if the participants had used both hands.
- RecycledEle 3y agoI suspect the background of the participants influenced the outcome of the study. I wonder if the participants in the study spent more time hand writing or typing in their lives. I also wonder if they spent more time engaged in deep though and learning while hand writing or while typing. I spent far more time thinking and learning while typing. Therefore, my brain has wired itself to think and learn while typing. There have been times when I was asked a difficult technical question, and had to make typing motions in the air and then check what I would have typed to be able to say the answer out loud. It would be unfortunate for our society to study old people and misapply the results to young people. I wonder if there are 3 groups in out society: The old learned by hand writing. The middle learned by typing. The young learned on touch screens.
- ithoughtful 3y ago[dead]
- xtiansimon 3y agoAs I read this the extent of the research is this moment of encoding the knowledge in notes. I’m curious about accessing data in notes. Typed notes are useful for fast lookup (text search). Handwritten notes have an interesting aspect where you find things quickly based on the irregularities of your notes—layout, notes on notes-which create visual differences. In the same way, my artistic sketches from old sketchbooks bring to mind the circumstances of my having made the drawing.
- ouraf 3y agoHandwriting might be good for memorisation (write a video transcript by hand and you'll remember most of it for a week. good way of finishing studies for a test), but my calligraphy is so horrendous that anything wrote with a pen is probably lost forever regardless of how i store them. Typed docs might be ephemeral to the brain, but the presentation is clearer and more malleable