Donald Knuth used to go to a secretary school to learn touch typing, and IIRC he could easily type more than 120 WPM. Yet he decided to write his books and papers first with pencil and a piece of paper, and then type them out. The reason is that he found that he typed faster than he could think, which in turn interfered with his thinking process, while writing on paper matches his speed of thinking.

I also find taking notes on paper helps me focus more than typing, but it could be just that writing slows me down so I have more time to unconsciously reflect more. I also find writing math on paper is way more effective than using a computer, but that's most likely because I'm not that familiar with LaTex, so typing out equations interrupts my thought process.

I don't think I care about what brain activation happens while I'm writing per se -- though I may care about behavioral/performance differences. Do you think more deeply or remember better when taking notes by hand? Are you more likely to catch errors?

Here's one study that looked at unrelated word recall tasks, and didn't see convincing evidence of a difference between handwriting and typing. However, they leave open whether there are differences that arise in more complex learning environments. https://www.jowr.org/jowr/article/view/963/930

I think the higher-level, more realistic experiment I'd like to see someone do is: for a single college-level psychology class, split students into handwriting vs typing groups, and assure them that they'll all be graded on a curve within their assigned group, and see if top-level performance between the two groups differs over a term.

lol!

> suggests handwriting may be irreplaceable when it comes to learning.

> For the typing condition, participants typed the same words on a keyboard using only their right index finger.

So they tested exactly nothing useful.

Give it up Mrs. Smith, the keyboard won.

In seriousness, I would always expect pressing a single button to require less brain power than drawing a complex line, even more so if the subjects have been in the digital world for the last 10 years.

Just from a pure mechanical motion finger movement of a single key being pressed at a time is far less than most of the full hand engagement wiring requires.

The study might have been better if the types used a full keyboard with both hands, but I suspect they always know the results would not be worthy to write home about.

But even they were. The task of transcribing is not all that engaging. Maybe I would have reserve brain power to do the task.

You will also have to convince me that what is measured, brain connectivity, is a metric we care about and has any real impact beyond being a fun trick.

The study used a pen and touchscreen for the writing case, so this comment is a tangent. But there's a lot to be said for the memory-palace effect of physically placing words in a specific place on a specific piece of paper in a physical notebook. I might not perfectly remember what I wrote, but I absolutely remember where I wrote it. That's lost with digital notes.

This study has been covered in HN before.

Is it really "typing" if you are only allowed to use your index finger?

Hang on.

They picked the 'digital generation' (early 20s), and then they forced them to type with right index finger only?

I'm a 45 year old touch typist, and I tried to type above sentence with my right index finger, and basically failed. The unfamiliar motion going against 30 years of muscle memory took all my brain power away from anything resembling creative thought or memorization.

My therapist sent me a study like this few years back when I wanted to write my journal on my laptop :). My comment is the same as back then - the study showing different regions light up is in the wrong order.

1. Do the functional test first - have a big group of people handwrite, and another big group of people type in the way that works for them, and then test memory and understanding.

2. Then, if there's an actual statistical difference, run the imaging tests to see if you can explain why.

As it is, these studies seem just "hey look at different pretty lights". Handwriting for many people in modern age is almost more of an artistic process than typing is; I'm sure it indeed lights up different areas of brain, as would caligraphy or painting - but please, please, start with functional testing first!

I am trying to bring this message to schools. We developed https://getsmartpaper.com for under-resourced schools in India, but are realizing that there is a major need for paper-digital integration within over-resourced US schools with 50%+ screen time.

While it's clear that the brain is more active whilst handwriting due to the fine motor control required to use a pen, I wonder if the "performance" benefits pertaining to learning some material are driven by the increase brain activation, or perhaps just by the increased amount of time spent with the material when writing something by hand. Does one encode a memory deeper by handwriting a set of words once, or by typing them 10x each?

Really interesting study, and I'm looking forward to the future study which extrapolates this to younger children and older adults.

I always found handwriting notes to be more effective at getting my brain to actually remember them compared to typing. When it comes to writing though I'll always pick the keyboard.

Not having backspace makes you think.

Proper use of backspace, cut, copy, paste during writing is actually writing and editing at the same time.

Having nice handwriting requires practice.

Having fast handwriting requires practice.

Let's learn it all, and while doing one of those, think of all the other modes. Maximum brain networks all the time.

Also, let's do that memory trick of coming up with a story to memorize long sequences of words.

Objectively poorly done study which does not come close to proving what it says it does.

Read the commentary on it publish in the same journal, it’s plain English and pretty scathing: www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1517235/full

> Handwriting activates broader brain networks than typing

No shit. My handwriting is so cryptic, I myself can't even read it. And if I have to go through my older than a few months notes - forget about it. It requires so much brain power, imagination and creativity (mostly for coming up with cursing words) that it must be not only fully activating my brain networks, but the afferent neurons up my butt.

I'm sure carving letters into stone activates even broader brain networks -- and the rest of the body as well.

If you drive with your off-hand while handwriting you're going to activate even more brain networks!

Haven't these EEG and FMRI studies proven to be mostly pseudoscience? More activity = more better sounds like an unwarranted assumption to me.

I suspect this is just a side effect of the way everything the brain does "evolves" from training data over the life of the organism. If someone was never taught to write, only typing their notes and assignments, my bet is the opposite evidence would be "discovered".

[flagged]

This is pseudo science.

How broadly the brain is activated is obviously not a meaningful measure of how well someone learns a topic. It is clear that handwriting requires more complex motor motions and visual processing, but why does that matter at all? Equivalently someone could argue, that, because more of the brain is "activated", the less focused the student is on the material, as the brain needs to perform additional motor and visual tasks.

>The study’s findings suggest that handwriting should remain an essential part of education

No, it doesn't. The setup could not even do it in theory. We lack a total understanding of how "learning a subject" and "brain activity" are related. There is no devices you can put on a human that could measure, after a study session, how well the human has learned some subject.

I hate these types of studies. Having a subject do something and measure how their brain lights up tells us precisely nothing. These studies are done again and again and again, there are no actionable results and no new insights. Nothing new about the brain was learned.

(BTW I wrote thousands of pages of hand written notes during University. My point has nothing to do with how effective or ineffective handwriting is for learning.)

It definitely activates my pain receptors after a few minutes.

Also

> For the typing condition, participants typed the same words on a keyboard using only their right index finger

This “study” is complete garbage.

This is literally the bell curve meme. Left side: just a pencil and a paper, right side: just a pencil and a paper, in the middle: obsidian, notion, latex, word whatever