The pen is mightier than the keyboard for turbocharging your noggin

Scientists claim to have found evidence that handwriting promotes learning more than typing on keyboards. A study involving 36 university students compared their electroencephalogram data while writing by hand with the same measures while typing. The differences in connectivity patterns in these brain areas, together with the …

[werdsmith]

Why aren't you taking notes?

As a life long obsessive learner and chronic procrastinator I have worked out what works for me, and I don't believe there is a one size fits all for everyone.

Notes, handwritten or otherwise, are virtually useless to me, in fact trying to take notes as am being instructed makes thing far worse. I have to exercise and practice many times to get things to stick.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why aren't you taking notes?

I found that too. If I just sat and listened to the teacher I could absorb it all, but if I was made to write it down at the same time I'd forget it. Reading it back later, it wouldn't be retained in the same way either.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Why aren't you taking notes?

"Reading it back later, it wouldn't be retained in the same way either."

Even if the scrawl could be read - which in my case it usually couldn't.

[Blank Reg]

Re: Why aren't you taking notes?

Same here, I didn't take notes in university, the only thing I wrote down was stuff like assignment due dates and things like that. I bought a pack of 500 sheets of note paper in first year and never finished it.

[deltics2]

Re: Why aren't you taking notes?

Taking instructions that you need to be able to recall for a few minutes is very different from learning something that will stay with you for weeks, months, years, or your entire life. That, I think, is the difference that this research (and the empirical evidence it is based on) is concerned with: "Learning", as opposed to "short-term recall".

For myself (and yes, everyone is different) I developed my own "short-hand" for note-taking in class, enabling me to take notes efficiently while still paying attention and "absorbing". BUT, I would then revisit my notes shortly after the lesson and transcribe to long-hand. That probably helped as well, by further re-inforcing the information by conducting a replay and revise exercise while it was still fresh in my memory, in addition to the notes I was transcribing.

Digital notes offer additional advantages such as searchability, linkability, referencability and flexible re-organisation.

These days we get the best of both worlds and for several years now I have been using an eink note book (reMarkable2) for day-to-day note-taking and for taking notes when working through things like udemy courses etc. For day-to-day to do lists and journalling I use a BOOX Note Air 3C - for productivity tasks (journals, to-do lists etc) the ability to use specific apps but still gain the embedding/retention benefits (*) of hand-written interaction with the device is a God-send, but the reMarkable remains my go-to for distraction-free, general note-taking and brain-storming.

* if I plan my day by typing into a list, I have to constantly consult my list through the day to remind myself what I was setting out to accomplish. If I hand-write my to-list I find I remember most if not all of the list, only returning to the to-do list app at the end of the day to update statuses and prep the next day.

[richardcox13]

Re: Why aren't you taking notes?

I, OTOH, find the key is to take notes. I don't need to (usually) go back to the notes, but the act of writing down at least a summary of the points really helps me absorb the information.

Equally if about to write some code I find writing some notes on what I plan to do makes keeping focus on the desired outcome (the code does what is intended) also helps. The code is likely to end up rather different to the plan, that does not matter. Having a plan makes all the difference.

But I fully understand we're all individuals[1].

[1] It is about time to watch "Life of Brian" again.

[Martin Gregorie]

Re: Why aren't you taking notes?

Equally if about to write some code I find writing some notes on what I plan to do

Doesn't everybody do this? When writing code, regardless of whether I'm writing in C, Java, COBOL, assembler, awk, or a bash script, I prefix each logical code block with a comment describing what its intended to do. And these comments remain there after the program has gone live to help whoever has to modify it in the future.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Why aren't you taking notes?

It's what I think doc strings are for: to clearly state the intention of the code. I normally use comments on code branches which might not be obvious. And I really on tests as proofs of the code thesis.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Why aren't you taking notes?

I remember years ago that the process of taking notes (which require cognitive processing of what was said or shown) followed by reading and then expanding, led to best knowledge retention over time. Taking notes on paper is also far less distracting that using a machine and notebooks can be nice and small. I suspect that at some point, I might move to an e-reader that does notes, but these are apparently still a bit slow. In the meantime, I tend to be pretty good at remembering when something interesting happenend and can normally find it very quickly.

And taking a little extra time to develop handwriting that is legible, at least to oneself, is a skill worth having. My tip: avoid using biros, the pressure and friction are really uncomfortable. Pencils, rollerbarlls or fountain pens are much, much easier to write with.

[that one in the corner]

Re: Why aren't you taking notes?

> I have to exercise and practice many times to get things to stick.

Aside from the simple "horses for courses" and "diff'rent strokes" from person to person, you are also talking about needing to put different amounts of effort into different parts of the process.

In other words, "taking notes" and "exercise and practice" are not in conflict with each other but act in different ways (and with different strengths between individuals).

So my experience differs from yours: if I am in a lecture and don't take a continuous stream of notes then the words won't even enter short term memory, but will tend to just wash past me; the act of note taking engages focus (for me). Otherwise anything else going on may capture focus (the people nattering in the audience, what that person is doing on their phone, the architecture of the lecture room).

Once past the hurdle of focus, the info bounces around short term memory so the writing can be notes (in full sentence form) rather than simple dictation.

Reviewing the notes provides the chance to see if there are any questions left at the end (and maybe the chance to ask them).

But if I then want to use the new information later on, I still have to practice - looking over the notes again in the following weeks, applying what they say to exercises, comparing it to other material in related areas. Drilling it into long term memory and tying it in to everything else (if it can't be tied into other learnt material then it isn't going to stay for the long haul - don't ask me to memorise a list of kings of England).

[elsergiovolador]

Connectivity

This seems like a poor study.

What if increased connectivity is due to brain having to control more complex hand movements and this connectivity is taking space that otherwise could be used for something else?

Also 36 students is more like anecdotal evidence and not something to write article about.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Connectivity

This is modern academia. Getting the paper out is what matters. Evidence is whatever you can scrape together.

[HuBo]

Re: Connectivity

Celebrating a half-century of Zimbardo's 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Connectivity

> and this connectivity is taking space that otherwise could be used for something else

Not sure that that is really how the brain works - having one lot of connections doesn't mean you are using up space that could be better used by some other connections.

From the earliest stages, brain development is all about pruning of connections, strengthening those that are useful and clearing away those that aren't, not to "create space" but to reduce the noise and streamline things. There is room for every crazy, random, set of connections, which is what you start off with. The more you get a variety of experiences - like fine control for writing as well as the different motions for typing - whilst you brains is still plastic (which generally means whilst you are young), the more your grey matter has a chance to keep interesting/useful connections and not simply prune them away: quite literally, use it or lose it[1].

[1] e.g. the experiments that demonstrated brains - animal ones, for obvious reasons - would prune away the ability to recognise vertical stimuli if raised in an environment with only strong horizontal stimuli (and vice versa). Or that human infants can detect speech sounds that adults in their culture literally can not, as those sounds don't occur in that culture's speech - and, unless given a reason to retain that ability (as in, hearing the alien language and having a reward for continuing to detect the subtle differences in the sounds) the infants will prune it away.

[Anonymous Coward]

electroencephalogram

electroencephalogram ?

A what?

I must try and work that into a random conversation today......

Thanks for the new word.

[-maniax-]

Re: electroencephalogram

It's not a new word but you may know it by its acronym

Ever watch any medical based drama\documentary shows?

Ever hear them talk about doing an EEG?

[david 12]

Re: electroencephalogram

Ever watch any medical based drama\documentary shows?

The one I watched, there were talking about doing an ECG. Or CAT. Or MRI.

EEG is used for brain research and to measure epilepsy:

[elsergiovolador]

Re: electroencephalogram

At least it wasn't Electricincelphallogram...

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists discover water is wet

“Scientists claim to have found evidence that handwriting promotes learning more than typing on keyboards.”

That's because there's kinesthetic learning involved. The movement help the mind retain the knowledge.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Scientists discover water is wet

Or it helps the mind get better at writing which is a more intricate process than typing. They only tested which parts of the brain activated during the process, not what was learned.

[david 12]

Re: Scientists discover water is wet

A good typist, using easy material like this (unconnected words clearly enunciated), can audio-type without engaging the brain at all. It's like playing a FPS -- if you have to think about shooting, you're reacting too slow.

[John Robson]

Re: Scientists discover water is wet

One could easily argue that there is also movement when typing... my fingers certainly aren't still.

36 is a pretty small sample, and they therefore won't have looked at the effects of things like dyslexia, or left handedness (given that the written world is RH focussed)

I wonder if it's different in arabic (or other right to left written languages)?

To be honest I wonder if it's a real effect, or whether the digital pen was not familiar and therefore required more concentration to write with.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone read any Carlos Casteneda ?

ISTR Don Juan advised him to write with his finger to memorise things.

Not bad for a madey uppy book ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Anyone read any Carlos Casteneda ?

... that likely enhanced his extraordinary recollections of "nonordinary reality" (through sensorimotor memory of the unknown) ...

[Anonymous Coward]

typing v. handwriting

a completely irrelevant fact: my spelling in a foreign language, when I type in that language is incomparably worse than when I write in that language by hand. I haven't experienced that in my native language, or while learning English, and it's not about typing as such, I've been a very fast touch-typist for many years. And it's not only bad spelling as such, but also, some form of persistent dyslexia while typing.

But learning new words in that language, by making a list of them in a notebook, and then going over them, as I did while learning English and German years ago, doesn't seem to be more efficient than using 'modern' technologies, like flashcard apps, so it seems to me the subject of handwriting v. print is more complex than simply one being superior to the other.

[doublelayer]

Quote sounds wrong

I will admit that I haven't read the paper, only the article. Still, the part that they quoted sounds very wrong to me:

"As increased connectivity in the brain was observed only when writing by hand and not when simply pressing keys on the keyboard, our findings can be taken as evidence that handwriting promotes learning. Interestingly, the increased connectivity between the various brain regions seems to be linked to the specific sensorimotor processes that are so typical in handwriting,"

We have two suggestions that don't appear to have any proof. The first is that more connections means more learning. I don't think so. There are lots of ways to have lots of connections that don't involve memory or learning. You would actually need to test whether learning happened rather than saying that these areas activated, so let's assume that meant a good thing happened.

The other part of this is that the movements are linked to the increased connectivity, but that could easily be the other way around: the connections are present when writing, not because writing creates them, but because they make writing work better. For all we know, the connections are there so that the handwriting can maintain a consistent visual style which isn't necessary when you're typing and can change the font later. The point is that we can invent lots of possible reasons for that correlation to exist and, unless we have tested that sufficiently to eliminate other causes and establish a rule, it's supposition what the connections mean. They could test this by having people write stuff they already know, stuff that has nothing to learn in it, and stuff they are learning. Then they could test the former suggestion by actually testing whether people managed to achieve different learning results after writing in a different way.

[jmch]

Interesting!!!!

I had already both experientially and anecdotally recognised that writing something down helps me and others I know to learn/remember better than typing.

Interesting to see that validated over a wider sample and in more controlled conditions

[Mike 137]

An extremely artificial scenario

From the paper: "E-prime 2.0 was used to individually display 15 different Pictionary words on a Microsoft Surface Studio. The participants used a digital pen to write in cursive by hand directly on the touchscreen, and a keyboard to typewrite the presented words." So they were copying individual words presented to them on screen, entirely devoid of any wider context.

This is a very artificial scenario and quite a different matter from taking e.g. notes at a lecture (which intrinsically involves meaning and context), and is likely to result in quite different brain activity.

However, as long ago as 1980, an experimenter at Rockefeller University succeeded in training students to read and write independent texts simultaneously with full comprehension of both*. In that case, the resulting brain wave patterns would have been really interesting.

*_{Hirst, W et al. Dividing Attention Without Alternation or Automaticity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 1980, Vol. 109, No. 1, 98-117}

.

[BartyFartsLast]

I've had one particularly odious trainer tell me that if trainees need to take notes then they don't understand the training, they weren't best pleased when I suggested that the trainees wouldn't need the course if they already understood and that it was the trainer's fault if they still didn't.

I find it useful to take handwritten notes, typing distracts me from the training because I find I need to concentrate on the PC whereas I can doodle, draw lines to other thoughts, parts of the training etc.

Somehow the act of writing creates better association and asimilation of knowledge for me.

[John Robson]

"I find it useful to take handwritten notes"

As do many people - others need other methods.

For instance in a meeting with a deaf participant... hand outs are useless - "Do you want me to look at the handout or listen to you?", and writing almost impossible.

A d/Deaf touch typist could take some notes during the meeting, despite having to have eyes up to listen to the meeting.

[Bump in the night]

The pen is mightier

We should have know that the almighty Qwerty would be defeated by the pen. After all it killed the Sword.