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Comment by zharknado | Hacker News Reader

They didn’t test learning at all; they tested writing a word or typing a word based on a Pictionary prompt.

I’m not a research scientist, but it seems like you could look at this evidence and just as easily conclude that writing by hand increases the extraneous load for learners, i.e. that the task of writing itself requires more attention or “mental bandwidth” which would be diverted away from whatever you’re hoping they will learn.

I’d like to know if there’s evidence against this alternative explanation.

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As someone who swears by handwriting, has owned a tablet for 20 years, and takes all meeting notes by hand, I think you make an excellent point: These ECG readings could mean many things. We still don’t have a good understanding of how the brain encodes information and stores it for long term retrieval. Assuming this study is methodologically sound, I think it’s a worthy research finding. However, the authors suggesting handwriting is superior to typing for learning is a speculative leap.

In this study they observed specific patterns that previously were attributed to learning and remembering.

> "The present findings suggest that the intricate and precisely controlled handwriting movements have a beneficial impact on the brain’s connectivity patterns related to learning and remembering."

But you are right, they do not directly _prove_ that handwriting yields a greater learning effect.

Which would actually be the easier experiment to run. No messy electrodes.

They may have been learning and remembering how to do traditional handwriting.

I wonder about the skill level of the writer/typist.

   "Forty university students in their early twenties"

Most older people learned to write and only learned to type when access to typewriters and computers became common.

But these forty 20-year-olds? They were probably using keyboards since the beginning, and may have written maybe in grade school or for a signature.

Fluency using a keyboard can be quite easy on the brain. I've been typing a long time and I don't even think of the spelling or word, it just comes out on the screen. In fact, I have forgotten logins and passwords, but my fingers will dutifully type them anyway.

I can also write, but I gave it for keyboards, and now I'm quite rusty. My writing is less legible and requires more concentration.

I can barely handwrite a complete sentence anymore. I’ve never had good penmanship, but decades of keyboard use has rendered my writing skills almost useless… and I’m too old to care! :)

Well, the learnedness as typist is probably not so much of a factor if you consider the setup:

   (b) type the presented word using the right index finger on the keyboard.

That's really one thing that threw me off, when I stumbled upon it: How is this realistic typing?.. Sounds almost like comparing a flute and a piano and concluding the superiority of the former, because the pianist had to play only using one finger at a time?

When I read a text that is either an unfamiliar topic or otherwise difficult I write it down by hand, word for word, into a spiral notebook as I read through it. I find that really helps to prevent me from skipping over passages without first understanding them.

I find the extraneous load helpful as it forces my attention. But this only works in cases when I can control the pace, such as when reading (as opposed to listening.)

Also, these university students are likely far more used to typing than handwriting

I think this is an extremely important point and would almost definitely bias the results of the study.

They used to say that the act of writing on the test will remind you of writing notes. But now a lot of tests are also typewritten. Also, that sounds like a cramming strategy; I'd rather just learn the material for real.

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