Why handwriting is better for memory and learning

Why handwriting is better for memory and learning

By Charlotte Hu Edited by Lauren J. Young

Writing notes in class may seem to be an anachronism because smartphones and other digital technologies remain all aspects of learning in schools and universities. But a constant flow of research continues to suggest that taking notes in the traditional way – with a pen and paper or even a stylus and a tablet – is always the best way to learn, especially for young children. And now scientists finally focus on why.

A recent study in Borders in psychology Watched brain activity in students taking notes and found that those who wrote by hand had higher levels of electrical activity in a wide range of interconnected brain regions responsible for movement, vision, sensory treatment and memory. The results are added to an increasing number of evidence that have many experts who talk about the importance of teaching children to write words in hand and to draw images.

Brain activity differences

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The new research, by Audrey van der Meer and Ruud van der Weel at the Norwegian University of Sciences and Technology (NTNU), is based on a fundamental study of 2014. This work suggested that people taking computer notes tapped without thinking, says van der MeerProfessor of neuropsychology in NTNU. “It is very tempting to type everything that the professor says,” she says. “It enters your ears and gets out of your fingertips, but you don't treat incoming information.” But when you take notes by hand, it is often impossible to write everything; Students must actively pay attention to incoming information and process it – prioritize it, consolidate it and try to connect it to things they have learned before. This awareness of relying on existing knowledge can facilitate the task Stay engaged and enter new concepts.

To understand specific differences in brain activity during the two approaches to take note notes, NTNU researchers changed the basic configuration of the 2014 study. They sewn electrodes in a frost with 256 sensors that recorded the brain activity of 36 students by writing or typing 15 words of the game game which were displayed on a screen.

When the students wrote the words by hand, the sensors acquired generalized connectivity in many brain regions. The strike, however, led to a minimum activity, if necessary, in the same areas. Handwriting of activated connection models covering visual regions, regions that receive and treats sensory information and the engine cortex. The latter manages bodily movement and sensorimotor integration, which helps the brain to use environmental entries to inform the next action of a person.

“When you type, the same simple movement of your fingers is involved in the production of each letter, while when you write by hand, you immediately think that the bodily feeling of producing A is entirely different from the production of a B,” explains Van der Meer. She notes that children who have learned to read and write by tapping a digital tablet “often find it difficult to distinguish letters that are very similar or that are mirror images from each other, like the B and the D.”

Strengthen memory and learning ways

Sophia Vindi-BooherDeputy professor of educational neuroscience at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the new study, says that his results are exciting and consistent with previous research. “You can see that in the tasks that really lock the motor and sensory systems, as in handwriting, there is this really clear link between this current motor action and the visual and conceptual recognition created,” she says. “While you draw a letter or write a word, you take this perceptual understanding of something and use your engine system to create it.” This creation is then reintegrated into the visual system, where it is treated again – resistant to the connection between an action and the images or the words associated with it. It is similar to imagining something and creating it: when you materialize something from your imagination (by writing it, drawing it or building it), it strengthens the imagined concept and helps it stay in your memory.

The phenomenon of memory stimulation by producing something tangible has been well studied. Previous research discovered that when people are invited to write, draw or play a word they read, they have to focus more on what they do with the information received. The transfer of verbal information to a different form, such as a written format, also involves activating motor programs in the brain to create a specific sequence of hand movements, explains Yadurshana SivashankarA student graduated from cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studies movement and memory. But writing requires more Brain motor programs to type. “When you write the word” the “, the real movements of the hand are linked to the structures of the word to a certain extent,” explains Sivashankar, which was not involved in the new study.

For example, participants in a study in 2021 by Sivashankar memorized a list of action verbs More specifically if they carried out the corresponding action whether they carried out an unrelated action or not at all. “Information drawing and information promulgation is useful because you have to think about information and you need to produce something significant,” she said. And by transforming information, you pave and deepen these interconnections through the vast networks of brain neurons, which makes “much easier to access this information”.

The importance of writing lessons for children

In many contexts, Studies have shown Whether children seem to learn better when they are asked to produce letters or other visual elements using their fingers and their hands in a coordinated manner, which cannot be reproduced by clicking on a mouse or by typing on a screen or keyboard. Vini-Booher Research has also found That the action of handwriting seems to initiate different brain regions at different levels of other standard learning experiences, such as reading or observation. His work has also shown that handwriting improves the recognition of letters in preschool children, and the effects of writing by writing “last longer than Other learning experiences who could attract attention At a similar level, ”says Vindi-Booher. In addition, she thinks that it is possible that the engagement of the engine system is to know how children learn to break themselves “Mirror invariance(Recording mirror images as identical) and start to decipher things such as the difference between the tiny B and P.

Vini-Booher says that the new study opens up more important questions about how we learn, such as the way in which the brain region connections change over time and when these connections are the most important in learning. She and other experts say, however, that new discoveries do not mean that technology is a disadvantage in class. Laptops, smartphones and other devices of this type can be more effective in writing tests or carrying out research and can offer more equitable access to educational resources. Problems occur when people are counting on technology too muchSaid Sivashankar. People are increasingly delegate thought processes to digital devices, an act called “Cognitive unloading»- Use smartphones to remember the tasks, take a photo instead of memorizing information or According to a GPS To navigate. “It's useful, but we think that constant unloading means that it is less work for the brain,” explains Sivashankar. “If we do not actively use these areas, they will deteriorate over time, be it memory or motor skills.”

Van der Meer says that some officials Norway apply to implementation Fully digital schools. She claims that the first -year teachers told her that their incoming students barely knew how to hold a pencil now – which suggests that they were not to color or did not assemble puzzles in nursery school. Van der Meer says they lack opportunities that can help stimulate their growing brain.

“I think there is a very solid argument to engage children in drawing and writing activities, especially in nursery school and kindergarten when they learn letters for the first time,” explains Vini-Booher. “There is something to engage the fine engine system and production activities that really have an impact on learning.”

A version of this article entitled “Practice” has been adapted to inclusion in the May 2024 issue of American scientific.