[Forge36]

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) writers use their natural writing technique (2 or 3 fingers?) vs 1.

It'd be interesting to test typing with a single hand (using words that can be entirely touch typed with one hand)

I'm surprised the choose not to gather that data.

https://repository.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2306&...

Is interesting in that it shows the opposite effect: improved recall. It also measured velocity/speed of response. Which shows writing was faster.

Another idea for a test: writing without ink.

[seanmcdirmid]

> So no only were typists not touch typing, they couldn't see what they were typing.

This is how I feel as a left hander while writing the old fashioned way. I can’t see what I’m writing so I get sloppy really quickly, and always need paper with lines.

Not that this makes their methodology not totally bunk, of course.

[Loughla]

Do you have any advice for helping a child who is left handed and sucks at penmanship?

My youngest is left handed, and his writing is just trash. I have no idea how to help him outside of specific left handed writing tools (that I'm pretty sure don't help at all).

[mycall]

Perhaps you could feel more comfortable using a 'right to left' language for handwriting.

[ryanjshaw]

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.

[Forge36]

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.