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Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

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Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#121

Post by crazygringo »

freilanzer wrote: post #117
crazygringo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 100% the same. People often claim that taking notes by hand, because it is slow, forces you to interpret and condense what you are learning into a more compact representation, and therefore understand it better. That has never been the case for me -- while I'm busy doing that thinking, I missed the last 3 sentences from the lecturer, and then am struggling to catch up, and when I finally figure out what they're…

> People often claim that taking notes by hand, because it is slow, forces you to interpret and condense what you are learning into a more compact representation, and therefore understand it better. > while I'm busy doing that thinking, I missed the last 3 sentences from the lecturer That's not the same kind of note-taking. The first is writing for understanding, the second is taking quick notes to avoid missing anyt…

No, I'm saying when I missed the last three sentences, now I don't even understand the lecture anymore. There's a variable written on the board and I don't know what it represents.

And then by the time I figure it out, I haven't understood a bunch of previous points that depended on knowing what the variable was.

Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#122

Post by syndicatedjelly »

Aardwolf wrote: post #45

Neither handwriting nor typewriting existed while the brain evolved. Why does the more modern method have to be the bad one again?

> Neither handwriting nor typewriting existed while the brain evolved.

Why is that relevant?

Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#123

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Moru wrote: post #112
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn to type? I never got over my penman ship problem, I just learnt to type and printed all my exams in college. And then it didn’t matter much after school since I would mostly type anyways. If I had to do it over again, I would probably force myself to write right handed. It should be possible to get used to it, but that would really be a choice they have to make for themselves.

My english teacher was forced to switch from left to right when he was young and his writing was the worst in school. This was before the computer revolution so he did write all the time.

I know it isn’t ideal, but I just like the idea of seeing t what I’m doing. Like the extra vision you get with contacts as opposed to glasses.

Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#124

Post by Moru »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #123
Moru wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My english teacher was forced to switch from left to right when he was young and his writing was the worst in school. This was before the computer revolution so he did write all the time.

I know it isn’t ideal, but I just like the idea of seeing t what I’m doing. Like the extra vision you get with contacts as opposed to glasses.

Some lefties have some tricks for that, have you looked into them? I'm no expert on the topic, just know there is some tricks to learn :-)

Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#125

Post by setopt »

neom wrote: post #90
Forge36 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if that's lost with this paper's method of typing. I learned on a Mac. The course material was copying from a book without looking at the screen, then correcting the errors. This second pass to correct mistakes is different, and it's not clear that you can be removed when taking notes without affecting learning.

I generally don't look at a screen when I'm typing, I know how to touch type perfectly, I learned to type using mavis beacon in the 90s and you'd get a very low grade in computers if you couldn't touch type.

If you don’t look at either the screen or keyboard, how do you adjust for variations between keyboards?

I regularly switch between a laptop keyboard, standard external keyboard, and ergonomic (curved/split) external keyboard, including switching between ANSI/ISO keyboard layouts (my country defaults to ISO but my MacBook has ANSI). After each switch I generally need a bit of time to adjust, and type quite a bit of errors for the first half-hour or so.

Especially when I have to type special symbols like backslash and percent, which move quite a bit between keyboards.

Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#126

Post by setopt »

blargey wrote: post #32

"Allowing the use of (the fingers of) both hands would cause many unforeseen effects on the brain, which would make it hard to interpret the results" so all participants had to "type using the right index finger [only]". How does one rule out the relevance of those "unforeseen effects" when claiming to compare typing in general vs handwriting in general? The paper only contains that one line about the matter, in the…

> How does one rule out the relevance of those "unforeseen effects" when claiming to compare typing in general vs handwriting in general?

Exactly… Most people can after training type much faster than they can write with a pen, assuming they’re allowed to use all fingers, which I’d expect to be crucial when comparing them.

> do Norwegian university students in their early twenties normally write in cursive?

Norwegian here: No. We learned cursive in elementary school but most students switched to “block letters” in secondary school. For the past 15+ years, students have also had school computers since secondary school, so about half of their writing went digital since then. (With somewhat negative results, given the attention span of most teens…)

Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#127

Post by neom »

setopt wrote: post #125
neom wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally don't look at a screen when I'm typing, I know how to touch type perfectly, I learned to type using mavis beacon in the 90s and you'd get a very low grade in computers if you couldn't touch type.

If you don’t look at either the screen or keyboard, how do you adjust for variations between keyboards? I regularly switch between a laptop keyboard, standard external keyboard, and ergonomic (curved/split) external keyboard, including switching between ANSI/ISO keyboard layouts (my country defaults to ISO but my MacBook has ANSI). After each switch I generally need a bit of time to adjust, and type quite a bit of er…

Oh for sure, if I'm using a keyboard I don't know, then yeah, disregard everything, I probably look at the screen and the keyboard and make a lot of mistakes. I find the mac keyboards all feel pretty much exactly the same, I use a keychron at work, but yeah, to your point, if I walked into a random best buy, I'd probably be awful on the keyboard unless it was a mac or a keychron.

Out of curiosity, why so many keyboards? I work with a dude (lawyer) who takes his keyboard everywhere with him, ha.

Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#128

Post by westurner »

ElFitz wrote: post #30
westurner wrote: post #24

I tried for a few minutes to find the HN thread where somebody refuted the "handwriting is better than typing" for fact recall claim. OTOH, IIRC, - EEG measures brain activation. It takes more of the brain to hand write than to type, and so it is unsurprising that there is more activation during a writing by hand activity than during a typing activity. - Do brain connectivity or neural activation correspond to favora…

> I tried for a few minutes to find the HN thread where somebody refuted the "handwriting is better than typing" for fact recall claim. You would have found it, had you written it down. Kidding aside, is this the one? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42288545

The one I recall had citations, I think

Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#129

Post by freilanzer »

crazygringo wrote: post #121
freilanzer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People often claim that taking notes by hand, because it is slow, forces you to interpret and condense what you are learning into a more compact representation, and therefore understand it better. > while I'm busy doing that thinking, I missed the last 3 sentences from the lecturer That's not the same kind of note-taking. The first is writing for understanding, the second is taking quick notes to avoid missing anyt…

No, I'm saying when I missed the last three sentences, now I don't even understand the lecture anymore. There's a variable written on the board and I don't know what it represents. And then by the time I figure it out, I haven't understood a bunch of previous points that depended on knowing what the variable was.

That's exactly the second kind of quick note taking I was talking about.

Re: Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

#130

Post by crazygringo »

freilanzer wrote: post #129
crazygringo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying when I missed the last three sentences, now I don't even understand the lecture anymore. There's a variable written on the board and I don't know what it represents. And then by the time I figure it out, I haven't understood a bunch of previous points that depended on knowing what the variable was.

That's exactly the second kind of quick note taking I was talking about.

OK, but you can't do both at the same time. That's my point.

And the "quick" version is not what people claim provides any benefits of understanding.

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