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Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread connectivity in brain

openread.academy

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

#51

Post by ryanjshaw »

Forge36 wrote: post #46
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…

I think it gets worse > To prevent artifacts produced by head and eye movements caused by shifting gaze between the screen and the keyboard, typed words did not appear on the screen while the participant was typewriting. So no only were typists not touch typing, they couldn't see what they were typing. Too many variables are changed between the two tests. A) writers can see whole words vs no visual feedback B) writer…

Not disagreeing with your points here in this context, but it's interesting to note that I learned touch typing on a typewriter in school and I know which letters I've missed when typing, and can happily copy pages of text without needing to see the screen - even to correct any errors.

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

#52

Post by zffr »

kstenerud wrote: post #31

I've been taking notes in a text editor since 1994. What I found was that taking notes via computer was much easier because I could finally keep up with what I'm taking notes about (typing is MUCH faster than writing), and could therefore spend more time considering the thing I'm taking notes on, rearrange things, group them, etc using simple keyboard commands. My impression is that my retention went way up and I had…

During college lectures my retention was highest when I didn’t notes at all. I found that if I took notes, most of my brain power went towards capturing the content instead of actively engaging with it.

Once I stopped taking notes, it freed up my mind to think critically about the material and helped me quickly identify when I was confused about something. When I was confused, I was able to ask the professor about it immediately instead of trying to figure it out on my own after the lecture

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

#56

Post by danielbln »

hk1337 wrote: post #10

I feel like this has been said before quite a bit but a lot of people always make excuses about how they’re the exception.

Or not everyone is the same (even ignoring the.. interesting stud design of the paper that excluded touch typists).

When I would learn vocabulary in school for a secondary language, the teacher would always state how this is best done by writing everything by hand. I never ever saw observed that benefit and always felt that to be true for me.

So I might be delusional, or there is something else at play here.

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

#58

Post by Forge36 »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #51
Forge36 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it gets worse > To prevent artifacts produced by head and eye movements caused by shifting gaze between the screen and the keyboard, typed words did not appear on the screen while the participant was typewriting. So no only were typists not touch typing, they couldn't see what they were typing. Too many variables are changed between the two tests. A) writers can see whole words vs no visual feedback B) writer…

Not disagreeing with your points here in this context, but it's interesting to note that I learned touch typing on a typewriter in school and I know which letters I've missed when typing, and can happily copy pages of text without needing to see the screen - even to correct any errors.

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.

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

#59

Post by BlueTemplar »

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…

There might be no 'normally' remaining any more :

I've heard that in some «almost only words» fields, laptops for students (and projectors for professors) got generalized during lectures (?),

while in math-heavy fields (and I assume, anything involving frequently having to do drawings / schematics), paper for students (and blackboards for professors) were still overwhelmingly used only a few years ago, and I predict are still going to be, until both hardware (e-paper just only barely got colour now !) and software gets much, MUCH better.

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

#60

Post by dang »

Stevvo wrote: post #22

The link sends me to an empty page that wants me sign to sign up to upload PDF files to an AI tool. It's not clear what this tool is for, or what relation, if any, it has to the headline. Flagged.

HN's software uses the canonical URL when it finds one and in this case it was bad (https://www.openread.academy/paper/reading?corpusId=null). We've reversed that now.
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