Modern technology has made writing by hand unnecessary for many. But using pen and paper comes with some serious benefits for memory and learning, research finds. What do you think? Thank you.
Typing is very slow and painful for me-it's bad for my brain.
“Writing by hand is also shown to increase memory and retention. The act of putting pen to paper activates areas of the brain that helps student increase their comprehension. It also involves more senses and motor neurons than when typing on a keyboard.”
https://www.oxfordlearning.com/writing-by-hand-is-good-for-the-brain/
Very thoughtful answers! Thank you everyone. I appreciate it.
Writing is a sensorimotor skill that contains a lot of motor planning and processing.
Writing requires mental effort, concentration, and attentional skills.
While writing, your outputs are thoughtful and outcomes governed by good eye hand coordination and thinking process.
Writing is an essential academic skill that if practiced, could help develop basic and higher cognitive skills as well.
Yes, handwriting is different from writing on a computer or Tabs. I think handwriting with pen and paper needs more concentration and effort than writing on a computer...
[1] Writing by hand helps to increase memory and retention.
[2] Writing about feelings can improve mood
[3] It also give a sense of well-being—putting pen to page helps flesh thoughts out in an orderly manner, leading to burdens feeling lighter.
[4] At Last, especially before bed, Writing skill can help improve sleep, which leads to better classroom performance as well as a sense of well being.
Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak
Handwriting increases neural activity in certain sections of the brain, similar to meditation and Handwriting sharpens the brain and helps us learn.
When I was in middle and high school, I discovered that writing things down helped fix them in memory much more reliably than repeated reading of textbook passages or teachers' handouts. In fact when I wrote exams I often had mental images of notes in my handwriting or of myself writing them. Those images weren't like facsimiles but more like a kind of mental "muscle memory" that enabled me to re-create my notes in my imagination and then put the results down on paper.
Memory. Writing by hand is also shown to increase memory and retention. The act of putting pen to paper activates areas of the brain that helps student increase their comprehension. It also involves more senses and motor neurons than when typing on a keyboard.
Handwriting increases neural activity in certain sections of the brain, similar to meditation. ... And high-tech magnetic resonance imaging has indeed shown that low-tech writing by hand increases neural activity in certain sections of the brain, much like meditation. 2. Handwriting sharpens the brain and helps us learn.
Writing things down by hand helps us remember and use the information — even if we never read our notes. Handwriting matters — even if you never read it. Writing things down by hand helps us remember and use the information — even if we never read our notes. In both studies, the differences showed up on brain scans.
Daily writing makes you smarter (especially when you write by hand). Writing makes you think. Some studies even show that writing by hand increases cognitive activity and can actually make you more intelligent—as long as you put the keyboard aside and write by hand.
Research shows there's something special about language development and the act of handwriting. In studies, kids who practice handwriting do better at reading and spelling. The reason? Some experts believe that forming letters by hand while learning sounds activates reading circuits in the brain that promote literacy.
Handwriting increases neural activity in certain sections of the brain, similar to meditation. ... And high-tech magnetic resonance imaging has indeed shown that low-tech writing by hand increases neural activity in certain sections of the brain, much like meditation. 2. Handwriting sharpens the brain and helps us learn.
Three Ways That Handwriting With A Pen Positively Affects Your Brain
www.forbes.com › sites › nancyolson › 2016/05/15 › thre...
Engaging the body in writing by hand helps make writing a more holistic activity. There is something uniquely physical and multidimensional about putting pen to paper to form words and sentences.
Learning the alphabet by interacting with each letter in many different physical ways helps students imprint and retain the letters and the letter sounds for easier recall when learning to read. Learning letters on a screen engages at most two physical channels: the eyes and the fingertips. It is not possible to tell one letter from another by the shape of the keys. Learning letters through writing them involves numerous tactile experiences, engaging the fine-motor muscles of the fingers and hand, and larger muscles of the arm and body, as well as the eyes.
Handwriting can help us slow down and fully engage with our thoughts. Have you ever heard anyone say, “I type as fast as I think”? This is certainly an asset when transcribing the spoken word, but thoughts need to breathe (as do writers), and writing by hand conveniently holds such a space for thoughts to fully form before being set down in sentences.
Proficient writing has a soothing flow and rhythm. While technology and culture is goading us to work faster and more intensely, tasks such as writing can help us find healthy balance in our work, our learning, and our play.
Being able to write effortlessly enables the mind to focus more fully on a topic. Struggling with handwriting takes valuable brain energy away from any writing task, but when that skill is mastered, it makes all the difference. Skilled, fluid handwriting is an asset to learning!
Yes, it is very true that writing with pen helps the brain a lot. I have so much written on Laptop that I tend to forget how to write on paper. I now find it very burdensome. My once good handwriting has deteriorated into something I do not like to see. I had a terrible experience when I had to write my Ph.D. comprehensive examination with pen. That was when it dawned on me that something was really wrong. Now that you have mentioned it, I think it is not too late to begin to write with pen again. I didn't know many others were experiencing the same thing. We should all make effort to renew our love for writing with pen on paper. Our brains work better with it.
hand writing is an art, skill, and exercise, all these had an effect on nerves and mood.
When we draw a letter by hand, we draw each element stroke by stroke, which activates neural pathways in the brain that pass near or through the regions that control emotions.
In our experiment, we found that notebook notes are not equal to handwritten notes. The researchers asked 65 students to watch five 15-minute lectures. Some participants took notes by hand, others typed on a laptop. The printed notes were more detailed, but their authors understood and remembered the essence of the report worse than those who wrote it down by hand. Testing was then carried out a week later, and students who wrote and repeated handwritten notes performed better on the questions.
Regards, Pushkin Sergey Viktorovich
ثبت بالدليل ان الكتابة باليد وتدوين الملاحضات يدويا مهم جدا في تنشيط الدماغ وخزن المعلومات والقدرة على استرجاعها من قبل الفرد سريعا
Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak
Dear Researcher,
Thank you for such a wonderful question.
There is a certain pace at which every part of the body works. The brain has a pace of its own and so does the hands. Usually the pace at which a brain thinks is faster than the pace at which a hand writes. So when a person is thinking and writing by hand, she/ he has to adjust to two different paces of the brain and the hand. Thus, she/ he is exercising her/ his brain. The brain is a muscle. On exercising, it develops.
Now what happens during typing! There is less difference between the pace of the brain and the hand. This is because we can type faster than we can write. So while typing, the brain has to exercise less. So, those who type a lot experience less brain development.
From this viewpoint, it can be said that writing by hand is good for the brain.
Thank you.
Best regards,
Anamitra.
I think that both activity and brain stimuli that writing promotes can be just as positive, whether handwriting or typing. But ... when the development of language, comprehension and knowledge have been related to handwriting, as we have had most of us in our childhood, such handwriting may be related to a greater stimulus in all the mental functions linked to language, memory and other cognitive brain abilities.
When you write by hand, you are investing in some level of mental energy. As you know learning is a function of the amount of invested mental effort. That is why writing by hand is far better.
Dear Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak thank you for this interesting question. I learned handwriting in my first year of elementary school in 1960. Since then, my handwriting has not changed significantly and it still looks rather neat. As least it is easy to read for others.
In this context, please see this useful link entitled "Bring Back Handwriting: It’s Good for Your Brain".
https://elemental.medium.com/bring-back-handwriting-its-good-for-your-brain-fe22fe6c81d2
From my experience, if i wrote any idea by my hand i can not forget it. It is easy to remember what you wrote.
Kind regards
Our body is not keeping pace with technological development. Handwriting motility withdrawal affects the cognitive structure of the brain. Lack of exercise leads to obesity. This is the price that comes with performance and comfort today. It remains to be hoped that in the future new technologies will help our body adapt to changing conditions.
The ability to produce and interpret written symbols is a unique human capability resulting in neural specialization for varied and non-stereotypical letter-forms. It was shown that visual–motor memory is more involved in self-created letter forms. Otherwise, handwriting experience is subjecting Forensic graphology and Neurology and can still help evaluate personality characteristics as well as can help early detection of neurodegenerative diseases.
Have a Happy New Year!
Writing by hand is a rather complex process and an excellent training for the brain. Studies have shown that students who take lecture notes by hand perform better than students who take notes on laptops. Please see this interesting link entitled "Writing By Hand Helps Student Cognition In A Specific Way"
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nancyolson/2016/09/28/writing-by-hand-helps-student-cognition-in-a-specific-way/?sh=69a9f50d891e
because of hand writing we focus on five senses and able us with more practice.
The movement of the fingers is better writing on paper (akin to climbing trees like our ancestors), than pressing buttons on the computer.
Dear Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak back in 1979 I wrote the entire manuscript of my Diploma thesis and in 1983 my complete PhD thesis by hand because there were no computers available. Then, after correcting the handwritten manuscripts, the final theses were written using a typewriter. By the way, my PhD thesis is available as public full text on RG:
Thesis The Chemistry of Tricarbonyl(fulvene)chromium Complexes
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