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.