Paper vs. devices: Brain activation differences during memory retrieval (2021)

I’m a statistic of one, but I started my digital mobile life on PalmOS/Handspring devices. I still prefer pen and paper for deep-thinking and future planning, despite having them reflected in a digital medium later.

Tactility of paper, plus not being subject to a glowing screen apparently changes something deep in my mind. No, e-paper and stylus is not the same for me, either.

I finish two notebooks per year.

My kid takes tests on the computer. And when I was in law school almost 20 years ago, students mostly took notes on computers, and tests were computerized as well.

I will note that when I was studying for the bar I found it incredibly helpful to re-write my daily lecture notes by hand.

This is something I never found in any digital product where paper is unbeatable.

Would love to hear how your PKB integration works!

I wonder if that is a well known or widespread phenomenon. The people who would be most enthusiastic about a particular type of device are the most invested in the previous solution, so replacing it for the seemingly “best” customers is a surprisingly high bar.

> Participants in the Tablet group used a stylus pen, thereby controlling for the effects of longhand writing with a pen in the Note group.

In this specific study this is not a notable effect between the Note and Tablet groups. For the phone group you're right that it's a completely different input, while also being much more painful all around due to the sheer device size.

Exactly like English or French. You also need to remember the correct sequence of letters (see my remark below).

> In contrast, if you write on a tablet or other device, the input system will sort of "autocomplete" for you.

Exactly like English or French. I didn't write half of the letters used to type this comment.

I think you are searching for Japanese exceptionalism where it probably doesn't apply. Remembering the correct kanji, and graphy of said kanji is pretty much the same as remembering the (wild) orthography of French or English words. I'm searching quite often if a letter is a 'a' or 'e' (doesn't help that cognates between French and English often swap those), the conjugation of a verb or if a letter is doubled or not (again often not the same for related words, for example ennemi vs enemy).

Your perception of the difficulty in-between writing systems is twisted by the decades of education you got in the said system vs the few years of learning another system with a second language. When I see some soup of letters in Japan, it's clear that the question is not just about one system being more simple than the other.

Neat!

i find SRS very useful. but i personally think it is not well suited to reference information. i'm skeptical of putting all my appointments in SRS for example (maybe birthdays would be worth it). or say I had collected a bunch of papers related to a topic I was very interested in. I don't necessarily think I'd want to memorize the list of them via SRS, but having the titles written somewhere for reference would be great. I think the point of this paper is that if that 'somewhere' is an SRS card, it is almost completely devoid of context (other than 'studying flashcards on computer' context), but if that somewhere is a notebook that contains lists of papers related to all the topics i'm interested in, it's much easier to find. (though computers are good at searching fast)

Spaced repetition is an entirely different dimension. It doesn't fit between the three mentioned modes. You don't get spaced repetition when e.g. attending class or reading a chapter. Instead, you make notes. That's what this study is for, and anything else is a distraction.

Then you should go tell the journal editors that this study is incomplete and didn't cover the type of memory you consider more significant, hopefully they will retract the paper

However, prioritizing physical space for a goal affects your real life. Maybe this doesn't apply if your written goal was just in a notebook that is also used for other things, but if it's on your desk, (and your desk isn't cluttered,) its physical important also signals the brain.

Could it be that such a huge goal as "be successful in my career" is just more important than the ones you put in Google docs?

Now to my point: I learned Python far better than any other language I've ever used, I think because it was the first language I used seriously, but maybe it was because I never used auto-complete in those early days?

i'd wager nearly every development environment is integrated to some extent, piping output in the unix shell is integrating.

I’ve never noticed memory differences based on how I made a note. I have, however, noticed that the act of making notes helps me understand something (which isn’t necessarily the same as recall) and writing on paper works best for me.

That said, I have never been able to take notes on a keyboard. I also find that physical notebooks not only are in practice much easier to search, but I also have the impression that the fact all your note pages physically still exist (and not "disappear" after you change pages) helps recollection.

But computer notes are much easier to search. So for things like meeting minutes, and daily todos etc, write it in a .txt file. But when following along a deep learning course, write the equations and diagrams on paper. Later you can write code examples in your personal cheat sheet for easy retrieval.

Another anecdata point, I have ADHD. It affects memory in all sorts of known and measured ways. I generally find if I can get something into long-term memory then I'm set. Working memory is terrible. Physically writing while working serves as a crutch there too.