Leverage The Positive Power Of Subject-Focused Research

WRITING BY HAND IS SURPRISINGLY IMPORTANT FOR THINKING AND LEARNING

by Dr. Russell Moul

When was the last time you wrote anything of importance down by hand? For many of us, writing by hand may have become an infrequent—if not abandoned—practice. Typing out ideas with keyboards is generally quicker and easier, but is the value of writing by hand gone for good? Not according to a new body of research exploring the cognitive benefits of pen and paper.

For some professional writers, the idea that the pen can help with creativity and thinking will not be news. Despite the digital turn, some writers have continued to use handwriting as a way to boost their productivity. The scientific world has only recently started to catch onto the supposed benefits of this practice, but the early results are already compelling.

Take school for instance As the world has moved progressively toward digital options, many schools have begun to place great emphasis on being tech-savvy and less weight on being able to manipulate a pen. In some cases, kids become proficient with typing before they have learned how to write by hand.

However, research into preschool children’s development has shown that those who learn their ABCs by tracing them through movement, like writing, have better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding than those who do so by typing. The act of performing the movements involved in handwriting is also thought to allow for greater memorization of new words.

In adults, the habit of taking notes with phones or laptops has become increasingly common, but it appears to be less effective than doing so by hand. For instance, a 2014 study found that students who relied on typing for note-taking in lectures and seminars appeared to perform worse on conceptual questions than those who took longhand notes.

But why is handwriting better for learning? The answer appears to relate to the relative complexity of the act when compared to typing. Writing requires more movement, more skill and coordination, and greater vision attention, and so it encourages different parts of the brain to come together to convert the shapes in our heads to something visible on the page.

To appreciate this, imagine explaining to someone the act of writing by hand. Where do you start? How would you communicate all the subtle activities that simply go into holding a pen and moving your fingers to form specific letters? How much pressure do they need to exert on the pen itself or the page, and how does it change as the pen moves?

And then there’s your visual system. Your eyes have to take in the information of what you’re producing and relay it to your brain so it can check that the squiggle on your paper matches the mental model of the script you’re trying to produce. If there are any errors or deviations, it has to send messages to change your hand movement to correct the shapes.

It’s remarkably difficult to even think about this, let alone explain it, and yet our brains do it all every time we turn to writing by hand.

Or you could type. There would be no need for any of this complexity; you can simply look for the key you want, tap it, and then check it has created the right letter on your screen.

However, the mounting evidence suggests that an overreliance on this, especially for children, is less effective for learning, while for adults the speed of typing may allow us to record information verbatim, but that does not mean we process it meaningfully. This does not mean typing is useless; we can still make similar connections and integrate information, but we need to do so more deliberately.

And just because handwriting appears to be more useful for remembering and processing information does not mean we need to throw away our digital tools. Some research has even shown that simply using a stylus on the screen can be just as useful, as the movement of writing is important, not the medium. ²