This time, Brain & Mind Roundup focuses on articles about writing and the brain, specifically how taking notes by hand (instead of by computer) actually facilitates learning and how learning cursive stimulates the brain.

The pen compels lucidity. –Robert Stone, novelist

A Learning Secret: Don’t Take Notes with a Laptop

Cindi May (Scientific American)

Because students can type significantly faster than they can write, those who use laptops in the classroom tend to take more notes than those who write out their notes by hand. Moreover, when students take notes using laptops they tend to take notes verbatim, writing down every last word uttered by their professor.

 But new research by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer demonstrates that students who write out their notes on paper actually learn more. Those who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who used took notes with their laptops.

Mueller and Oppenheimer postulate that taking notes by hand requires different types of cognitive processing than taking notes on a laptop, and these different processes have consequences for learning.  Writing by hand is slower and more cumbersome than typing, and students cannot possibly write down every word in a lecture.  Instead, they listen, digest, and summarize so that they can succinctly capture the essence of the information.  Thus, taking notes by hand forces the brain to engage in some heavy “mental lifting,” and these efforts foster comprehension and retention.  By contrast, when typing, students can easily produce a written record of the lecture without processing its meaning, as faster typing speeds allow students to transcribe a lecture word for word without devoting much thought to the content.

What Learning Cursive Does for Your Brain

William R. Klemm (Psychology Today)

Scientists are discovering that learning cursive is an important tool for cognitive development, particularly in training the brain to learn “functional specialization,” that is capacity for optimal efficiency. In the case of learning cursive writing, the brain develops functional specialization that integrates sensation, movement control, and thinking. Brain imaging studies reveal that multiple areas of brain become co-activated during learning of cursive writing of pseudo-letters, as opposed to typing or just visual practice.

The benefits to brain development are similar to what you get with learning to play a musical instrument. Not everybody can afford music lessons, but everybody has access to pencil and paper.

Brain Research and Cursive Writing

Dr. David Sortino*

Rand Nelson of Peterson Directed Handwriting, believes that when children are exposed to cursive handwriting, changes occur in their brains that allow a child to overcome motor challenges. He says, the act of physically gripping a pen or pencil and practicing the swirls, curls and connections of cursive handwriting activates parts of the brain that lead to increased language fluency. That is, cursive writing ability affords us the opportunity to naturally train these fine motor skills by taking advantage of a child’s inability to fully control his fingers. This means cursive writing acts as a building block rather than as a stressor, providing a less strenuous learning experience.

Moreover, cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing, typing or keyboarding.

*Dr. David Sortino holds a Master’s degree in Human Development from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Clinical/Developmental Psychology from Saybrook University.