Hacker News Reader

Comment by gghackernewsgg | Hacker News Reader

This is how it was explained to me by a tutor: handwriting is better for learning because it's slower. The need for brevity forces you to mentally engage the material in ways that are more conducive to understanding and recall.

If you can replicate that mental engagement while typing, you'd probably get similar results.

This makes a lot of sense to me in light of what we know about how learning happens. I have never seen any research on brain activity though, and my tutor didn't cite any.

View on HN

I've heard this theory too—but I feel it doesn't match how we do anything else in life. For example, you could make typing slow too by forcing people to type with two fingers, or use a really tiny keyboard. Are touch typists worse at learning?

This doesn't really refute the theory—maybe touch typing is worse—but it doesn't match my logical intuition at all.

> Are touch typists worse at learning?

Wish I had a definitive answer. I do know from personal experience that when I'm touch typing notes while reading a book or listening to a lecture, my thoughts drift fairly often. (I'm a fairly fast touch typist though, 140+ wpm.) I'm also more likely to be thinking, "damn, that's a lot of notes!" rather than about the material, lol. Whereas while handwriting, I'm heavily engaged with the material, to the point where I lose sight of the fact that I'm in the middle of taking notes.

Oh and because it's so easy to make quick edits while typing, I find it hard to resist the impulse to correct a typo or add an extra word here and there, which further distracts me from the material.

Also, I can touch type for long stretches without the slightest mental fatigue, but I need a tiny mental break after 30-60 seconds of handwritten note taking.

If the method used for purposeful slow-down results in more cognitive load to type, it should make it worse. With enough practice with the method, the slow-down could remain whereas the cognitive load could go away. I think then it should match the effect seen with handwriting.

Here's my own more detailed article, though it's not saying much more on this.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/handwriting-better-than-typin...

Because it is about learning. You can't learn a hard phrase on an instrument without slowing down. You can't touch type fastly without learning the motions slowly first.

IME it's not just about slower. It's about forcing you to think about how words go together, where line breaks fall, how you're laying out bullet points, etc.

Since you can change all of this on computers (or it happens automatically), you don't have to give it thought before writing it down.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com