Handwriting Versus Typing

This study looked at studies which were researching handwriting versus typing in chidren and adults. It is already known that handwriting is more complex and each approach to written expression activates different areas of the brain and requires different skills, but is one superior?

In short - handwriting is superior in most aspects, however, not all!

Handwriting

Handwriting requires significant coordination not only of our hands and fingers but also our eyes (eye-hand coordination) and different areas of our brain including linguistic, fine motor, proprioception, and sensory areas.

The skill of handwriting begins to be developed when we are quite young, think about when we're learning to grasp a crayon or a paintbrush! These early efforts are what helps us to begin to learn the skills required to accomplish legible handwriting later in life, after countless hours of practice. This is one thing parents and people often forget - we did not just pick up a pencil one day and write legibly, this important skill requires many hours of practice over many years, utilizing a variety of tools.

Along these same lines, given the advance of technology, some pre-teen and teens have expressed frustration about their handwriting not looking like everyone else's handwriting. An important aspect of this skill that we need to be teaching children is that your handwriting helps to show your personality, it is uniquely yours. Typing allows for everything to look exactly the same, uniform, and handwriting allows for more creative expression but children today need to be taught that this is a good thing, they need support and encouragement. Interestingly enough, learning cursive seems to help with this!

Learning to write is associated with literacy, spelling, grammar, identifying letters, and much more. It also helps with attention and focus and ultimately sets the brain up for learning, memory, and ability to recall information many years later. Learning these skills as a young child, before your brain has pruned unnecessary neurons (your brain gets rid of unused "stuff") means it is easier than learning as an adult but also sets their brain up for an easier time with literacy, reading, comprehension, and much more - even as an adult!

Starting as a young child means that by the time we're even ten years old, writing letters is automatic, we have built up the muscle memory which is something difficult to develop even as an older child. This muscle memory means we are able to focus more on the content, able to relate to the information more!

If a child does not work on handwriting at a very young age, they may also struggle with things like cutting paper and experience less dexterity and strength in their hands and fingers. This may not seem like much, but we need this dexterity and strength to do things like our jobs, play an instrument, hobbies, and some sports. Additionally, if we are not using these skills, our brain does not develop those pathways which are used for other purposes. In addition to the physical development challenges, the child may also struggle with things like memory, learning other things, recalling information, comprehending the meaning of text, understanding context of words and phrases or something someone said, organizing their thoughts, reading, spelling, concentration, attention, and much more.

Handwriting in particular really depends on and promotes something called "functional connectivity," this is referring to how when someone does something (handwriting in this case) all those processes in the brain become connected functionally. "Those that fire together wire together" is a phrase often heard in the neurology world and this is quite strong with handwriting. It is thought that this is why handwriting is behind better learning outcomes, memory consolidation, processing of the information provided, and much more.

Cursive also promotes functional connectivity, in fact, it it is even more increased compared to handwriting block letters. This increase is due to the fact that the letters are connected and it is considered a complex motor pattern. Cursive requires more parts of the brain because of the more complex task, planning on the space required because all letters are connected, as well as anticipating the next letter. This differs with the motor planning that comes with block letters where we lift the pen between each letter. With all these positives concerning cursive, it does positively impact education and cognitive development!

Here is a short list of things handwriting can help with ...

We all know handwriting is slower, but it is thought that this is part of why we learn more when we are handwriting something, like notes. This aspect allows us to be more creative, to process the information, the paraphrasing required forces us to "digest" the information, there is much more active processing with handwriting compared to typing.

Handwriting allows us to be more intimate with the material. Those of us who took notes with pen and paper are aware of and remember drawing arrows, circling things, underlining, quickly grabbing our highlighter for something, etc. All of these things we did, was us interacting intimately with the material we were learning. Along the way, we learned to take notes, to paraphrase, to filter information because there is no way we could possibly write down every word being said. This also allowed us to be more personalized with our approach, we were more selective with what we wrote down.

This is in sharp contrast with typing where most people find themselves typing verbatim what is being said, almost robot-like with very little interaction with the material. Often, with typing, students do not filter the information, there is less paraphrasing. This contrast is likely at least part of the reason why we learn much more when we handwrite.

Typing

We all know of typing as a great option that is convenient, it is faster, sometimes easier to read, and it is uniform. Unfortunately, it also does not utilize nearly as many areas of the brain as writing does.

Although typing utilizes some of the same aspects of handwriting, it is not the same and actually does NOT involve fine motor skills because it is repetitive tapping movements of the fingers, which is a gross motor skill and does not require much for manual dexterity.

Typing involves much less cognitive load since we are not creating each letter individually, we are just tapping a series of uniform buttons that are generally very similar even between different keyboards.

Typing involves less involvement of language and memory, especially with some of the more recent advantages of autocorrect, spell check, grammar checks, etc all of these may seem great but it means we are using our brains less and less. With the body, the phrase "Use it or lose it" is true. If we do not use a skill, we will lose it and as discussed earlier in the handwriting portion of this blog, it is not only what the final product is - letters on a page or screen, but the PROCESS which helps the brain to function in other tasks like learning, memory, and much more.

Typing is great for when we are brainstorming or need to work fast, generating ideas or maybe taking minutes in a meeting which require more accuracy. An important thing to remember though is that the processing involved with typing is much less reflective than that involved in handwriting.

Due to the automated aspect of typing, particularly once we have been doing it for awhile, it is generally less effective when we need to remember something, recall it, or paraphrase it.

Typing may help with decision making and attention as well as spatial organization, it is also dependent on woring memory and executive functioning. When we are typing, especially touch-typing, it is using both hands and therefore may help with inter hemispheric connectivity (between each side of the brain) which is generally not something we get with handwriting unless you're writing with both hands at the same time! It does not require as much spatial awareness (we do not need to worry about "running off the page" with today's technology!)

Conclusion

Handwriting is generally the superior method compared to typing, however, each has its own advantages. Handwriting involves more areas of the brain and impacts much more than just the final product we see on the paper, it is an active process, compare to typing which is generally a more passive process and involves fewer areas of the brain.

Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/pdf/life-15-00345.pdf

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This is not medical advice, always ask a chiropractor if chiropractic care is appropriate for you, and your preferred healthcare provider before making dietary, supplement, or lifestyle changes.