{"id":64638,"date":"2024-06-21T10:40:46","date_gmt":"2024-06-21T15:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=64638"},"modified":"2024-06-21T10:40:46","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T15:40:46","slug":"exercising-the-brain-handwriting-vs-typing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=64638","title":{"rendered":"Exercising the brain: handwriting vs. typing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elegant writing by hand has always been a trial for me.\u00a0 The harder I try to make my handwriting presentable, the more it turns out looking like chicken scratches.\u00a0 I'll never forget how my second grade teacher, Mrs. Kiefer, was in despair over my poor penmanship, almost to the point of crying.\u00a0 \"Vicky,\" she would say, \"you are such a good student in all other respects, why can't you write better?\"\u00a0 It's the same way with my brother Denis.\u00a0 Watching him write, and seeing the product as it emerges on the page, it is obvious that forming letters on the page is a kind of suffering for him.\u00a0 And yet, both Denis and I prefer to compose whatever we really care about on paper — be it a poem, an essay, or just random thoughts.<\/p>\r\n

I'm a super fast typist, and I can spew out things on a computer screen almost as fast as I normally talk.\u00a0 It's easy as abc.\u00a0 When I do so, however, I'm not thinking<\/b>, I'm just gurgitating.<\/p>\r\n

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Currently, psychiatrists and neuroscientists have been studying exactly what happens in the brain when a person writes letters and words by hand.\u00a0 What they are finding is that this neuromuscular activity stimulates creativity.<\/p>\r\n

\"Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning\", by Jonathan Lambert, npr (5\/11\/ 24)<\/p>\r\n

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If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.<\/p>\r\n

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity \u2014 imagine having to write all your emails longhand.<\/p>\r\n

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.<\/p>\r\n

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad \u2014 for both children and adults.<\/p>\r\n

In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition<\/a> and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall<\/a> of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding<\/a> of material.<\/p>\r\n

\"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand,\" says Ramesh Balasubramaniam<\/a>, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. \"It has important cognitive benefits.\"<\/p>\r\n

When I contemplate what the essential difference between handwriting and typing is for creative thought, it seems that the former forces you to ponder<\/b>, to slow down, to draw deep connections, to reflect, while the latter invites you to let verbiage flow freely.<\/p>\r\n

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.<\/p>\r\n

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.<\/p>\r\n

The npr article offers much more anecdotal and experimental evidence in favor of introducing children to handwriting from the very beginning of literacy training.\u00a0 Here on Language Log, we have often discussed the relative benefits of cursive vs. printing.\u00a0 That, I believe, is largely a matter of esthetic preference.\u00a0 More important is the dichotomy between handwriting (whether cursive or printing) and typing.\u00a0 It would be an educational and cultural tragedy if we simply let learners tap out their messages on a keyboard before they have become intimately familiar with the cognitive power of writing by hand.<\/p>\r\n

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Selected readings<\/b><\/p>\r\n