Writing by Hand Makes Children Learn Better
According to researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, there’s something to be said for still writing in cursive. According to a new study published in Frontiers in Psychology, “cursive handwriting and drawing resulted in higher-level processing within the brain over keyboard typing,”
“The use of pen and paper gives the brain more ‘hooks’ to hang your memories on. Writing by hand creates much more activity in the sensorimotor parts of the brain. A lot of senses are activated by pressing the pen on paper, seeing the letters you write and hearing the sound you make while writing,” Professor Audrey van der Meer, lead author of the paper, said in a statement. “These sense experiences create contact between different parts of the brain and open the brain up for learning. We both learn better and remember better.”
For this study Van der Meer and her team fitted twelve 12-year-olds and twelve young adults with a high-density electroencephalogram (HD EEG) and asked to use either a digital pen on a touchscreen or a keyboard to take notes of words displayed on a screen. The team found that despite carrying out similar tasks, the brain activity of the participants using a pen were more active than those using a keyboard, IFLScience.com reports.
“Learning to write by hand is a bit slower process, but it’s important for children to go through the tiring phase of learning to write by hand. The intricate hand movements and the shaping of letters are beneficial in several ways. If you use a keyboard, you use the same movement for each letter. Writing by hand requires control of your fine motor skills and senses. It’s important to put the brain in a learning state as often as possible. I would use a keyboard to write an essay, but I’d take notes by hand during a lecture,” Van der Meer explains.
Professor Van der Meer hopes to align this new study with her previous research to “bring about positive change in the way children learn going forward”; encouraging children to write and draw in early development
