Writing by hand makes us think better
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Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom
Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
F. R. (Ruud) Van der Weel and Audrey L. H. Van der Meer
Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
Front. Psychol., 25 January 2024 | Sec. Educational Psychology (Volume 14 – 2023)
Abstract
As traditional handwriting is progressively being replaced by digital devices, it is essential to investigate the implications for the human brain. Brain electrical activity was recorded in 36 university students as they were handwriting visually presented words using a digital pen and typewriting the words on a keyboard. Connectivity analyses were performed on EEG data recorded with a 256-channel sensor array. When writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns were far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard, as shown by widespread theta/alpha connectivity coherence patterns between network hubs and nodes in parietal and central brain regions. Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning. Our findings suggest that the spatiotemporal pattern from visual and proprioceptive information obtained through the precisely controlled hand movements when using a pen, contribute extensively to the brain’s connectivity patterns that promote learning. We urge that children, from an early age, must be exposed to handwriting activities in school to establish the neuronal connectivity patterns that provide the brain with optimal conditions for learning. Although it is vital to maintain handwriting practice at school, it is also important to keep up with continuously developing technological advances. Therefore, both teachers and students should be aware of which practice has the best learning effect in what context, for example when taking lecture notes or when writing an essay.
Selected readings
- "Exercising the brain: handwriting vs. typing" (6/21/24)
- "The benefits of handwriting" (9/16/19) — with extensive list of readings
- "Handwriting Shows Unexpected Benefits Over Typing", by Denis Storey, Psychiatrist.com (1/30/24)
[Thanks to Ben Zimmer and John Rohsenow]
Thomas Hutcheson said,
May 30, 2026 @ 10:19 pm
My vague recollection of univeristy ~60 years ago was that the taking of hte noteswas useful even if I generally could not even make out my handwriting when attempting to consult them later on.
JPL said,
May 31, 2026 @ 1:51 am
Shouldn't the activity being compared involve writing to express what they were thinking, rather than copying an already written text? Writing is an act of expression, and there are different kinds of expressive task, such as expressing one's original thoughts for one's personal record, or writing for an audience or publication. Trying to transcribe notes from a spoken text, like bits of a lecture, is somebody else's thought. The question is interesting, but I don't see how you could get much insight from this methodology. The interest is more about praxis than brain functioning, more about effectiveness of the expression for a given purpose than about the learning process.
David Marjanović said,
May 31, 2026 @ 3:30 am
This is incredibly vague – if that's the best science can currently do, it just goes to show how much more there's left to learn about how the brain works.
What is all this "connectivity"? What is connected with what, and what do the connections cause? As long as we have no idea of that, I'm not sure there's a point.
Peter Cyrus said,
May 31, 2026 @ 4:39 am
Back in the Good Old Days, if you wanted to get from Paris to Barcelona, you had to walk. It's 1000km, so it took 6 weeks, during which time you had to cross rivers and mountains, find places to stay and food to eat, and you probably encountered dangers to circumvent. It would certainly have been a memorable experience!
Nowadays, you can fly in less than 2 hours for less than the price of the shoes you would have worn out, and the next morning you'll already have forgotten about it. BUT … you can then spend the next six weeks reading books on the topic of your choice, or talking with people, and you will certainly learn more than someone who spent those six weeks walking.
Typing isn't a learning experience; it's just the solution to a problem that would otherwise take a lot of time away from more productive types of learning.
Victor Mair said,
May 31, 2026 @ 8:38 am
@Peter Cyrus
"you can then spend the next six weeks reading books on the topic of your choice"
Within a week or so, when I find the time, I will post a list of all the thousands of books a recently deceased gentleman read in his life.
Although I don't think they have kept lists, I'm certain that my brothers Thomas and Denis have read thousands of books of all sort.
Yves Rehbein said,
May 31, 2026 @ 10:02 am
I don't doubt there is an effect but those brain connectivity patterns, how much of that are patterns encoding or are missing the different writing skills?
Stephen Goranson said,
May 31, 2026 @ 3:44 pm
Was there a cognitive change when Egyptian scribes switched from rush brush and palette to split-nib pens and inkwells?
(I leave Chinese brushes to others.)
Chas Belov said,
May 31, 2026 @ 9:06 pm
@JPL:
I remember when I was trying to learn an acting role in my teens, writing it over and over again by hand helped me memorize it.
Peter Grubtal said,
June 1, 2026 @ 2:29 am
@David M. :
when PET arrived on the scene many foresaw a golden age of brain science. Nowadays it's looking more-and-more as if those bloodflows in the brain were over-interpreted. They sometimes seem to mean nothing more than that the brain is anticipating physical action, and are nowhere near localised enough to draw any conclusions about connections.
Richard Hershberger said,
June 1, 2026 @ 3:57 am
Even apart from the question of the validity of the finding, I absolutely guarantee that this will be misused in the tiresome debate over teaching cursive, conflating handwriting with writing in cursive. I know this because I have been seeing exactly this conflation ever since the tiresome debate first arose. I don't accuse the advocates of disingenuity, as I have not seen evidence that they have thought it through that far.
Mark said,
June 1, 2026 @ 4:59 am
More accurately, "handwriting but not typing with the index finger of the right hand":
> In the present study, participants only used their right index finger for typing to prevent undesired crossover effects between the two hemispheres.
One wonders whether this artificially-imposed way of typing tells us much about typing as it is actually carried out in life.
And I'm not a neuroscientist, but I also can't help but wonder whether "crossover effects between the two hemispheres" might be rather relevant if you're comparing the effect on the brain of two writing methods where one is unilateral and the other is bilateral?
wgj said,
June 1, 2026 @ 8:51 am
The sample consists of "40 students in their early 20s at our university" – a typical tiny WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) sample that has little to no statistic value.
Victor Mair said,
June 2, 2026 @ 3:58 pm
I know many Norwegian students who are not WEIRD (who are black, Asian, …).
Barbara Phillips Long said,
June 1, 2026 @ 12:40 pm
From the paper:
We concluded that the involvement of fine and intricate hand movements in notetaking, in contrast with pressing keys on a keyboard that all require the same simple finger movement, may be more advantageous for learning (Van der Meer and Van der Weel, 2017)…
When I take notes, sometimes my "fine and intricate hand movements" are… doodling. It appears there was no doodling control group.
Philip Taylor said,
June 1, 2026 @ 1:24 pm
May I respectfully ask, WGJ, how you know that the "40 students in their early 20s at [a specific] university" were (a) "White,", (b) "Industrialized", (c) "Rich", and (d) "Democratic" ? The only one of your five criteria that I regard as unexceptionable is "Educated".
Stephen Goranson said,
June 1, 2026 @ 1:49 pm
Without flogging a thesis, what do we know about cognitive differences in writing traditional and then simplified characters in Chinese, or cursive and then alphabetic in Mongolian or in Turkish?
Kenny Easwaran said,
June 1, 2026 @ 1:59 pm
Philip Taylor – these were students at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. These are all residents of a Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democracy. That is what WGJ meant to reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_World
Philip Taylor said,
June 1, 2026 @ 5:28 pm
Thank you, Kenny. So not "white" at all, merely western. And not applying to the students at all, but rather to their place of residence. Ah well
David Marjanović said,
June 2, 2026 @ 7:26 am
Failure of peer review.
That's another reason the paper is a failure of peer review!
Daniel Deutsch said,
June 2, 2026 @ 8:24 am
I recommend chisel and stone. You really weigh your words.
Rodger C said,
June 2, 2026 @ 9:32 am
conflating handwriting with writing in cursive
And on top of that, usually, conflating cursive with Palmer hand.
Daniel Barkalow said,
June 2, 2026 @ 11:44 am
Have they attempted to replicate these findings with a post-mortem Atlantic Salmon? (c.f. "https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8119(09)71202-9")
Stephen Goranson said,
June 2, 2026 @ 5:29 pm
Perhaps someone could compare the approaches to writing systems by Peter T. Daniels and Philippa Steele.
Andreas Johansson said,
June 3, 2026 @ 3:13 am
Well, I've certainly known people who do type like that in real life. Highly educated people who use computers every working day.
As someone who learnt to touch-type without particularly trying – and certainly without any formal tuition – in my teens, it puzzles me, but their existence is a brute fact.
On another tack, making me type like that would require a higher conscious cognitive effort than touch-typing or hand-writing, because I'm not used to it. Might the connectivity difference tell us more about the difference between an automated task and one requiring conscious attention than about any differences between typing and writing as such, on the highly plausible assumption that at least most subjects don't type like that normally.
Rodger C said,
June 3, 2026 @ 8:54 am
Data point: I type like that because I'm an ancient who went to school in the days when keyboarding was called "typing class" and was for girls who wanted to be secretaries. Even if I'd wanted to take the class, I'd have been an object of ridicule. Besides, it wasn't on the college-prep track. You know, Real Professionals.
Rodger C said,
June 3, 2026 @ 8:54 am
Data point: I type like that because I'm an ancient who went to school in the days when keyboarding was called "typing class" and was for girls who wanted to be secretaries. Even if I'd wanted to take the class, I'd have been an object of ridicule. Besides, it wasn't on the college-prep track. You know, Real Professionals.
Rodger C said,
June 3, 2026 @ 8:54 am
(Mouse error caused that to post twice)
Barbara Phillips Long said,
June 3, 2026 @ 6:17 pm
The results of this study did not involve any writing on paper with a pen or pencil. It only required the subjects to write individual Pictionary words with an electronic pen. At least in my experience, "writing" with a device on a screen involves a loss of control — the pen tends to skid around.
The decision to restrict typists to one-finger typing with the right hand seems odd to me. The study authors say they didn't want the use of the left hand to complicate the EEG data. As Mark noted, this is problematical. My observation is that most people who use one finger on their right hand to type also use the index finger on their left hand as well.
If the typists aren't using their usual style of typing, and the writers aren't using their preferred pens on actual paper, then it seems to me the EEG results can only be interpreted very narrowly. That is, the EEG results may predict EEG results for writing with an electronic pen. Assuming the EEG results would be the same for pen-on-paper writing, for instance, would need to be explored through further research.
The authors of the paper claim learning improves with handwriting. There was no measurement of learning or memory included in the study.
Andreas Johansson said,
June 4, 2026 @ 1:30 am
@Rodger C
As mentioned, I was never taught to touch-type either*, it was just a natural progression from hunt-and-peck for me.
* In fact, my school cancelled typing class just before I would have taken it, on the grounds that computers were making typewriters obsolete. Which never quite made sense to me, but then no-one asked my opinion.
David Marjanović said,
June 6, 2026 @ 8:57 am
I learned to touch-type at home – from my grandmother's coursebook (that my mother had also used).
Rodger C said,
June 6, 2026 @ 9:16 am
In fact, my school cancelled typing class just before I would have taken it, on the grounds that computers were making typewriters obsolete.
Clueless bureaucracy strikes again? Or finding a lame excuse for a funding cut?
Philip Taylor said,
June 7, 2026 @ 7:36 am
And I was taught to touch-type at the age of 16 by my first employer, the External Telecommunications Executive ("ETE") of the General Post Office ("GPO"). Despite the fact that I was employed as a (trainee) engineer rather than as an operator, it was deemed essential that all YITs ("youths-in-training") in the ETE could touch-type (and send and receive audio Morse, read the same from undulator tape, and also read five-unit code punched tape). I still touch-type to this day (I use 50-year-old IBM "clicky" keyboards on all my machines) but I would probably score poorly if examined as my fingers roam at will rather than follow the strict precepts of home-keys, etc.
David Marjanović said,
June 12, 2026 @ 7:40 am
It's amazing how often the two are really hard to distinguish, isn't it.