Is it really "typing" if you are only allowed to use your index finger?
I think it would be interesting to compare hand dominance in writing vs typing then.
I always wondered if they'd benefit from a bridge app that would feed the phone's input into to their desktop/laptop, like a networked keyboard
> suggests handwriting may be irreplaceable when it comes to learning.
> For the typing condition, participants typed the same words on a keyboard using only their right index finger.
So they tested exactly nothing useful.
Give it up Mrs. Smith, the keyboard won.
In seriousness, I would always expect pressing a single button to require less brain power than drawing a complex line, even more so if the subjects have been in the digital world for the last 10 years.
Just from a pure mechanical motion finger movement of a single key being pressed at a time is far less than most of the full hand engagement wiring requires.
The study might have been better if the types used a full keyboard with both hands, but I suspect they always know the results would not be worthy to write home about.
But even they were. The task of transcribing is not all that engaging. Maybe I would have reserve brain power to do the task.
You will also have to convince me that what is measured, brain connectivity, is a metric we care about and has any real impact beyond being a fun trick.
>The study might have been better if the types used a full keyboard with both hands
Agreed. This reminds me of solving Rubik's cubes, where solvers employ "fingertricks" like using index finger followed by middle finger to do a U2 (two turns of the "up" face) more quickly. Similarly people often minimize "regrips" and "cube rotations" (changing which side is facing you) to improve efficiency and get times down. What it also does is result in a more specific and consistent set of motions that I think are easier to remember and execute. People will also talk about algorithms being "in their hands" to differentiate between being able to spew out the notation vs actually doing it. I've found that for several algorithms I've memorized, if I don't do them at a natural (fast) speed and the usual positioning, I can forget the moves and lose track of what I'm doing. If I had to do every turn using my whole right hand, slowly, I suspect I would struggle a lot.
Digital notes are searchable, so I'd say this is a very fair trade-off. If all my notes are .txt files in a "notes" directory, even if I don't recall which file I wrote my pizza order from last week in, I can grep them all for keywords like "pizza" to find it immediately. (I can also manage the notes with SyncThing to have them on multiple PCs/phones at once)
For many people (and other animals), memory is tied to a specific place. The poster knows that the note they made is i.e.
red notebook on top shelf, page 12, top left corner.
Searching in digital notes doesn't give that same sense of place.
And the sense of place, plus the "path" that connects items in the space, is an important part of memory and learning.
It's more that with a physical note you aren't giving yourself permission to forget, because you can't instantly repo the information. Just like taking a photograph of a beautiful moment is detrimental to creating a memory of said moment.
While this may not scale well to the complexity of modern filesystems, it might work well for a stylus-based digital notetaking device.
Here's one study that looked at unrelated word recall tasks, and didn't see convincing evidence of a difference between handwriting and typing. However, they leave open whether there are differences that arise in more complex learning environments. https://www.jowr.org/jowr/article/view/963/930
I think the higher-level, more realistic experiment I'd like to see someone do is: for a single college-level psychology class, split students into handwriting vs typing groups, and assure them that they'll all be graded on a curve within their assigned group, and see if top-level performance between the two groups differs over a term.
That's not to say one is superior to the other. But maybe it means that technique is more important than medium.
I used to do it in sequencing programs like PlantUML, but moved to draw.io -> figjam afterwards, with mouse and keyboard and stylus.
What you're used to and what features you need will heavily influenced the process I guess.
I've tried various tools, but nothing comes close to the same freedom.
Drawing a diagram, it frustrated me to no end to come at the bottom corner of the page and need to either redraw it all on some bigger canvas, or try patch a sheet to extend it, or continue on another page while looking back at the previous one. Same for the max length of a single line.
In figjam or miro the canvas just expands infinitely, it's near A3 size yet I never run out of paper, never run out of color ink, never run out of post'its etc.
It's slower, but I never have to think about the material side of things, which is incredibly freeing to me.
To each their own of course, at this point I think the options are just a lot more balanced than 5 or 10 years ago.
Really interesting study, and I'm looking forward to the future study which extrapolates this to younger children and older adults.
I also find taking notes on paper helps me focus more than typing, but it could be just that writing slows me down so I have more time to unconsciously reflect more. I also find writing math on paper is way more effective than using a computer, but that's most likely because I'm not that familiar with LaTex, so typing out equations interrupts my thought process.
In grade school had to go to all these classes during recess to get different pencils, pens, grips, wiring methods.
The reason was my hand could not keep up with my thoughts. So the result was skipped words, and merging of two words and all these other things.
I am still poor at spelling, but the solution was typing. Once I started typing well my grades went up and I no longer found doing the work a chore.
As for myself, I definitely understand the problem he's describing. I catch all my fleeting thoughts with a keyboard, but I always find my mind wandering into tangents and end up losing the focus of what I'm really getting at, or I end up in a cycle of endless micro revisions. When I started writing with pen and paper it enforced a certain economy into my writing process. By having a natural speed limiter, I have to focus more on the heart of what I'm getting at; being in the zone writing with pen and paper feels totally different to me than writing on a keyboard, you get into a much deeper state of focus.
Personal diaries are also written with pen or paper, because I found out that, even if I type it without any interruptions, I can't dive that deep into the issue and dig it the way I want. I also noticed that, while writing this comment, new ideas for blog posts are also born on paper, with some notes, too.
I also keep a notebook which I carry everywhere and scan it when it finishes. That "scratchpad" carries hundreds of thought blobs like that. While they are mostly to-do lists, also ideas, small notes, and other pointers to ideas and small stuff are in these notebooks, and they work as an external working memory for me, allowing me to dig, process and think in a way which I can't do while looking to a screen and typing away on a keyboard.
No shit. My handwriting is so cryptic, I myself can't even read it. And if I have to go through my older than a few months notes - forget about it. It requires so much brain power, imagination and creativity (mostly for coming up with cursing words) that it must be not only fully activating my brain networks, but the afferent neurons up my butt.
Proper use of backspace, cut, copy, paste during writing is actually writing and editing at the same time.
Having nice handwriting requires practice.
Having fast handwriting requires practice.
Let's learn it all, and while doing one of those, think of all the other modes. Maximum brain networks all the time.
Also, let's do that memory trick of coming up with a story to memorize long sequences of words.
They picked the 'digital generation' (early 20s), and then they forced them to type with right index finger only?
I'm a 45 year old touch typist, and I tried to type above sentence with my right index finger, and basically failed. The unfamiliar motion going against 30 years of muscle memory took all my brain power away from anything resembling creative thought or memorization.
My therapist sent me a study like this few years back when I wanted to write my journal on my laptop :). My comment is the same as back then - the study showing different regions light up is in the wrong order.
1. Do the functional test first - have a big group of people handwrite, and another big group of people type in the way that works for them, and then test memory and understanding.
2. Then, if there's an actual statistical difference, run the imaging tests to see if you can explain why.
As it is, these studies seem just "hey look at different pretty lights". Handwriting for many people in modern age is almost more of an artistic process than typing is; I'm sure it indeed lights up different areas of brain, as would caligraphy or painting - but please, please, start with functional testing first!
Also
> For the typing condition, participants typed the same words on a keyboard using only their right index finger
This “study” is complete garbage.
How broadly the brain is activated is obviously not a meaningful measure of how well someone learns a topic. It is clear that handwriting requires more complex motor motions and visual processing, but why does that matter at all? Equivalently someone could argue, that, because more of the brain is "activated", the less focused the student is on the material, as the brain needs to perform additional motor and visual tasks.
>The study’s findings suggest that handwriting should remain an essential part of education
No, it doesn't. The setup could not even do it in theory. We lack a total understanding of how "learning a subject" and "brain activity" are related. There is no devices you can put on a human that could measure, after a study session, how well the human has learned some subject.
I hate these types of studies. Having a subject do something and measure how their brain lights up tells us precisely nothing. These studies are done again and again and again, there are no actionable results and no new insights. Nothing new about the brain was learned.
(BTW I wrote thousands of pages of hand written notes during University. My point has nothing to do with how effective or ineffective handwriting is for learning.)
_aavaa_•9mo ago
Read the commentary on it publish in the same journal, it’s plain English and pretty scathing: www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1517235/full
IcyWindows•9mo ago
smokel•9mo ago
_aavaa_•9mo ago
commandlinefan•9mo ago