Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning

[adjfasn47573]

“A recent study in Frontiers in Psychology monitored brain activity in students taking notes and found that those writing by hand had higher levels of electrical activity across a wide range of interconnected brain regions responsible for movement, vision, sensory processing and memory. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that has many experts speaking up about the importance of teaching children to handwrite words and draw pictures.”

Absolutely but this is not “recent” knowledge. This is known in neuro sciences for at least a decade.

My biggest hope is many western countries that see a decline in education results since the 90s/00s will finally start to reform education and use scienctific knowledge as a bases for how to structure it.

If you can - it’s German, maybe there’s some Auto translation available these days - watch Manfred Spitzer’s talk about “Digitale Demenz” (digital dementia). It’s eye opening!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5EKy0x55L4 Actual talk starts at 14:53.

[NitpickLawyer]

> “A recent study in Frontiers in Psychology monitored brain activity in students taking notes and found that those writing by hand had higher levels of electrical activity across a wide range of interconnected brain regions responsible for movement, vision, sensory processing and memory. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that has many experts speaking up about the importance of teaching children to handwrite words and draw pictures.”

If this "recent study" is the one posted a few weeks ago here, then the methodology was shoddy at best. They compared handwriting to typing but constrained to "one finger typing". Monitoring brain activity on that task is surely flawed. No idea why they did it like that, but I'd wait till better tests are done.

[John7878781]

Generally, it is true that writing by hand is better for recall and memory. However, teachers often use this as a justification to force students to handwrite everything, which can be very counterproductive for a subset of students.

I am currently in high school and have taken 17 AP classes. I have tried taking notes time and time again and have consistently found that they do not help me at all. I have a 3.99 GPA, 1570/1600 SAT, and have received 5s on all of my AP Exams. I know how to study and know what works best for me. I am not a notes person, and when teachers force their "scientific" teaching methods upon me, it does nothing but harm my learning and waste time.

I love the idea of science being incorporated into learning but we need to make sure students are allowed to discover what works best for them.

[Elaris]

This immediately reminded me of my experience in school. At that time, the teacher encouraged us to take notes in class, and I would desperately copy down what the teacher said, especially the “key points” written on the blackboard, for fear of missing them. But the interesting thing is that I was not “listening” at all at that time. My attention was all on copying, and as a result, I didn't remember what was actually said. After class, I almost never looked at these notes again, they just became a pile of papers in my schoolbag that made me feel guilty. Later I found that this way of learning was not suitable for me. Instead, I can remember content that has stories, pictures, and emotional resonance, rather than copying word for word. So I think that even if “handwriting” is helpful to some people, it does not mean that it is equally effective for everyone. The real challenge may be to help us find a learning method that suits us, rather than forcing a “optimal solution”.

[al_borland]

Thinking back to when I was in school, taking notes during class didn’t do anything for me. I would never read them, and the focus on trying to get it all down meant that I wasn’t really listening, simply transcribing.

That said, I didn’t really know how to study. This was fine in high school, I didn’t need to, but in college this hit me hard. I found that if I went through the book and hand wrote a cheat sheet, even for classes that didn’t allow them, the act of making that sheet meant I remembered nearly all of it, so that turned into my study method. Though I’d only spent about 1-2 hours doing this the day before an exam, so I’m not the model of good study habits. I still don’t really know how to study, but writing helped, just not in the context of a classroom during a lecture. I did much better by simply listening. That’s all I did in high school, no notes or home studying. My grades weren’t as good as yours, but decent enough where it wasn’t a problem.

[john_the_writer]

I was the same. Notes all through year 1 and 2 of university.. Less in year 3, I paid attention, and took part in class. I also recorded the lecture. My grades shot up. In year 4, I took minimal notes, and had my best year.

It's like the paper straw, or learning style stuff. Bad science lead to bad policy.

[abduhl]

How is your learning harmed? How have you been disallowed from discovering what works best for you?

[necessary]

That’s quite impressive, care to share what does work for you?

[sky2224]

I didn't read the research paper, so maybe they do this, but I think an emphasis needs to be placed on the specific subject having notes taken on.

I think hand written notes for math is just a no-brainer situation. Math formulas do not translate well to typing. Programming courses though? Probably a bit of a different story.

Additionally, I'd be interested to know if the learning is improved when talking about how much info is retained from that lecture period versus after studying the material noted down. I've been experimenting with taking typed notes and using an AI model to generate anki cards for me from those notes. So far it has been quite useful.

[mastodon_acc]

It's mostly because learning happens kinda all over the brain. Concepts don't get stored into a specific region. I suspect that by engaging more areas of the brain the concepts have more surface area available to be integrated into.

[mullingitover]

I went from a 2.0 GPA in high school to a 4.0 in college, and I credit a large part of that to a few habits I developed:

- Show up to each and every class, sit in the front row (they don't charge extra for these prime seats!) and write down everything that goes on the board. Ask good questions when you have the opportunity.

- Take advantage of office hours (another perk that doesn't cost extra)

- Do every scrap of extra credit that's offered

The last two items help, partly because there's a lot of subjectiveness in grading so impressions matter, but I think the biggest thing was the writing. I would fill a D-ring binder with a couple hundred pages each semester, and a lot of it stuck with me.

[nytesky]

I never went to office hours because I felt I had not worked hard enough to bother the professor yet. Just fell further and further behind. Big mistake that haunts me to today, learn from this point!

I’m more skeptical of write “everything” down — depends on how feasible that is (is slides vs chalk board - you can probably copy everything if they are writing on a board which is slower than pen and paper. )

[DangitBobby]

"Writing down everything that goes on the board" only works if you can write and listen at the same time. I cannot. I had to balance having the lesson from class available in my notes and actively hearing and digesting what they were saying. It was not easy. But ultimately having notes was a better strategy for getting homework done, so that's what I prioritized.

[calmbonsai]

Well-done on learning how you best learn. A book I recommend to any/all college students is "What Smart Students Know" https://a.co/d/iB8LNNW . It still has, sadly, a very click-baity title and marketing, but it has enormous practical study advice for different subjects.

Wow. I kid you not, we never were offered any extra credit aside from the occasional lab follow-ups.

I found my Humanities classes usually not worth attending due to the large lecture hall environment and so much route-memorization. It was far more time-efficient to speed-listen through the lectures on audio recordings and "attend my class of 1" while taking notes.

I found office hours very hit-or-miss depending on the professor. My electronics professor was a horrid lecturer, but awesome 1-on-1. His office hours ended up being "my class". The exact opposite of my physics professor who was a real showman with whiteboard diagrams and connecting desperate topics during lecture, but an absolute ass in person.

I ended up applying "selective neglect" to a two junior year courses as they weren't in my major, didn't stack, and the entire grade was based on only 3 exams. I just crammed for each exam. It suuucked at the time and was super-stressful, but looking-back it really ended up being the best use of my limited resources.

I do wholeheartedly concur with physically writing down lecture notes and doing as much work as possible "on paper". It helps with both retention and concept synthesis.

[danielbln]

Everyone (teachers, mainly) always told me this but I could never see it in myself. I always learned better when I typed, and not when I hand wrote things. Hand writing just slowed me down, which for many is part of the point ("it forces you to think about it!") but I never got that either. It's just slow. I do wonder how many there are where this adage of "write by hand, learn better" just doesn't hold true.

[NaOH]

(2024)

Previous discussion:

Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39482641 - Feb 2024 (130 comments)

[euroderf]

Writing it down by hand is better - that's all fine and dandy. But to sell me on it, include two more "features" (i.e. requirements):

- Give me an app to scan my (mostly neatly-written) notes into text, maybe with hooks so I can train it on my own quirks of notation. Then I can review my notes more easily - even on the go - during the semester, and rearrange & reformat & refactor them.

- As long as you have that training data, also generate for me a custom font that re-creates my handwriting style.

[hommelix]

> - Give me an app to scan my (mostly neatly-written) notes into text, maybe with hooks so I can train it on my own quirks of notation. Then I can review my notes more easily - even on the go - during the semester, and rearrange & reformat & refactor them.

Some tablets have apps for your first request. If I write by hand so that I can read myself later, my Supernote Nomad can transcript and export to text file. It's not perfect, but with the fast feedback, I can rewrite a word more cleanly when I see that a letter was not recognized.

[Brajeshwar]

A few years ago, there were discussions about popular font creations inspired by handwriting. I don't remember them, but a quick search got me these.

https://www.handwrittner.com/

https://www.calligraphr.com/

[jamiek88]

Apple released a video showing their notes app doing all of the above.

I don’t know if it’s part of their failed ai launch though?

[revicon]

Taking a photo of my handwritten notes and passing it to ChatGPT works 95% of the time. Once in a while it gets a character or two wrong, but for the most part its magic for me.

[deafpolygon]

This is a bit weak. Isn’t it entirely plausible that their brain “lights up” as they try to condense what they are hearing or learning- therefore processing the information. Typing tends to be poorly thought because people are capable of simply transcribing (which engages the ‘motor’ memory and disengages learning).

[ozgrakkurt]

If writing is boring and it makes you quit the work altogether then this point is useless.

Same idea with doing exercises when reading text books. Just reading is better than reading a little and doing a little bit of exercises

[eviks]

It isn't, the article references a garbage study, which is apparent is you simply read the commentary on the very same link provided in the article: no learning in the protocol, nonsense alternative (typing with a single finger) etc

[pier25]

There's tons of research that connects fine motor control with cognitive development.

[codr7]

I always carry a notebook to write down stuff I need to remember, and it's extremely rare for me to go back and read anything I've written.

I also use OrgMode, which doesn't seem to have the same effect at all.

[goku12]

Org mode, especially org-roam is for stuff you need to forget, not remember. Org-roam's structured and interlinked information format allows them to be retrieved quickly on demand. A knowledge-base in essence. That frees up your memory for more important stuff.

[Koshcheiushko]

This has worked for me. Specially to understand proofs of theorem and practicing maths.

[mrbluecoat]

Good advice that's a couple decades too late

[goku12]

So, what is the alternative now?