Writing with hand helps to think better

Updated on: Monday, January 24, 2011

Children writing with hands make for better learners than those who type on keyboards, according to researchers.
They say something seems to be lost in the brain process when moving from pen to keyboard as reading and writing involves a number of our senses, the journal Advances in Haptics reports.

Writing with hand leaves an imprint in the part of the brain called the sensorimotor, which helps humans recognise letters, according to the Daily Mail.

Merely touching and typing on a keyboard produces a different response in the brain, which means it does not strengthen the learning mechanism in the same way.

In an experiment, two groups of volunteers were asked to learn an unknown alphabet. The first was taught to write the letters by hand, while the other used keyboards. Periodically, their recollections of the alphabet were recorded and those who learned the letters through reading and writing came out best.

The test was conducted by Anne Mangen, reading expert from Stavanger University in Norway, and neurophysiologist Jean-Luc Velay, Marseille University in France.

Writing with hand helps to think better

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