Posted on 09/18/2019 5:59:05 PM PDT by beaversmom
People are losing the brain benefits of writing by hand as the practice becomes less common
Not so long ago, putting pen to paper was a fundamental feature of daily life. Journaling and diary-keeping were commonplace, and people exchanged handwritten letters with friends, loved ones, and business associates. While longhand communication is more time-consuming and onerous, there’s evidence that people may in some cases lose out when they abandon handwriting for keyboard-generated text.
Psychologists have long understood that personal, emotion-focused writing can help people recognize and come to terms with their feelings. Since the 1980s, studies have found that “the writing cure,” which normally involves writing about one’s feelings every day for 15 to 30 minutes, can lead to measurable physical and mental health benefits. These benefits include everything from lower stress and fewer depression symptoms to improved immune function. And there’s evidence that handwriting may better facilitate this form of therapy than typing.
A commonly cited 1999 study in the Journal of Traumatic Stress found that writing about a stressful life experience by hand, as opposed to typing about it, led to higher levels of self-disclosure and translated to greater therapeutic benefits. It’s possible that these findings may not hold up among people today, many of whom grew up with computers and are more accustomed to expressing themselves via typed text. But experts who study handwriting say there’s reason to believe something is lost when people abandon the pen for the keyboard.
Psychologists have long understood that personal, emotion-focused writing can help people recognize and come to terms with their feelings.
“When we write a letter of the alphabet, we form it component stroke by component stroke, and that process of production involves pathways in the brain that go near or through parts that manage emotion,” says Virginia Berninger, a professor emerita of education at the University of Washington. Hitting a fully formed letter on a keyboard is a very different sort of task — one that doesn’t involve these same brain pathways. “It’s possible that there’s not the same connection to the emotional part of the brain” when people type, as opposed to writing in longhand, Berninger says.
Writing by hand may also improve a person’s memory for new information. A 2017 study in the journal Frontiers in Psychology found that brain regions associated with learning are more active when people completed a task by hand, as opposed to on a keyboard. The authors of that study say writing by hand may promote “deep encoding” of new information in ways that keyboard writing does not. And other researchers have argued that writing by hand promotes learning and cognitive development in ways keyboard writing can’t match.
The fact that handwriting is a slower process than typing may be another perk, at least in some contexts. A 2014 study in the journal Psychological Science found that students who took notes in longhand tested higher on measures of learning and comprehension than students who took notes on laptops.
“The primary advantage of longhand notes was that it slowed people down,” says Daniel Oppenheimer, co-author of the study and a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. While the students who typed could take down what they heard word for word, “people who took longhand notes could not write fast enough to take verbatim notes — instead they were forced to rephrase the content in their own words,” Oppenheimer says. “To do that, people had to think deeply about the material and actually understand the arguments. This helped them learn the material better.”
Slowing down and writing by hand may come with other advantages. Oppenheimer says that because typing is fast, it tends to cause people to employ a less diverse group of words. Writing longhand allows people more time to come up with the most appropriate word, which may facilitate better self-expression. He says there’s also speculation that longhand note-taking can help people in certain situations form closer connections. One example: “A doctor who takes notes on a patient’s symptoms by longhand may build more rapport with patients than doctors who are typing into a computer,” he says. Also, a lot Berninger’s NIH-funded work found that learning to write first in print and then in cursive helps young people develop critical reading and thinking skills.
Finally, there’s a mountain of research that suggests online forms of communication are more toxic than offline dialogue. Most of the researchers who study online communication speculate that a lack of face-to-face interaction and a sense of invisibility are to blame for the nasty and brutish quality of many online interactions. But the impersonal nature of keyboard-generated text may also, in some small way, be contributing to the observed toxicity. When a person writes by hand, they have to invest more time and energy than they would with a keyboard. And handwriting, unlike typed text, is unique to each individual. This is why people usually value a handwritten note more highly than an email or text, Berninger says. If words weren’t quite so easy to produce, it’s possible that people would treat them — and maybe each other — with a little more care.
Try CBD oil
It depends on the pen but my hands are ink-free.
I downloaded an MS Word page-a-day calendar and printed off several weeks that I put into a 3 ring binder. I write daily notes on how much I spend, work projects, home projects, meetings and appointments, etc. Why?
I’ve been a programmer for 39 years and I discovered I had forgotten how to write. Writing things down helps you retain information. If you wrote down everything, you would never forget anything because it is on your list. I watched an aunt go through Dementia and she refused to document anything. Her brain atrophied. All she does now is parrot back everything she hears on CNN.
I agree with you that writing things down helps you remember. When I was working I had so many things going on, I decided to change to a PC, mostly because I had so much information on so many different projects I needed to be able to find things quicker. It was probably the best shift I ever made because I could put my hands on almost anything in just a few minutes. I found that most people have selective memories and there’s no better way to back up your arguments than getting the info quickly.
With a PC you can take notes and link to other documents. Any other document, including things like project specifications that can be more than a 100 pages.
I’ve gotten so used to it, I use a computer or smartphone for almost everything. Just so I can search quickly. It works great for my calendar and for note files and for my daily log.
I’m not dissing handwriting, not at all. If I wanted to learn more about a new subject, I would make handwritten notes. It really does help imprint the information into your head.
Just gazing down.
How does it work? Do you apply it to the joints externally, or take it internally? Where does one get it? I get so many spam emails about it that I sort of assumed it was snake oil.
They are good Hokies. I bought several things from them. Their emails are one of my favorite things.
I have resisted the “buying lots of expensive stuff” bug. I am trying to journalize things (one journal for religious activities, one for work, one for personal, etc). I just need to dedicate the time.
I buy it from a guy locally but you can buy the oil if it is legal in your state. I do about 4 drops under the tongue, hold for 60 seconds and then chase it down with kombucha (it kills the taste).
You can also apply it directly. I find it helps with joints.
It doesn’t work for everyone. Some people say it helps with anxiety but I don’t have that. Swallowing it will lead to dreaming as it is a very mild hallucinogen. Some people smoke/vape it to bypass the liver so that doesn’t happen.
One other side effect is that it will dial back your buzz from smoking weed. I think they give it to you if you “overdose”.
I have to say that I have spent too much money on modest cost pocket knives, high cost harmonicas, and art supplies for how little workout I give them. Boys and their toys.
However, I could spend ten times as much and never equal my wife and her dolls. LOL.
I have built her a doll house. It is 6’4 tall and 13’ long and still growing.
Heheheh, playing war...I haven’t thought about that in a long time.
They would probably just whisk you away and stick you on Ritalin now if you did that as a kid...
Never mind the hysterical adults seeing you with toy guns.
Last time I used a fountain pen was when I was in 7th grade. And the last interaction I had was having my hand put in a slowly tightening vise by Mr. Stauffer (my shop teacher) because I was exploding the ink cartridges in one of the big shop vises...
He was a really good guy. I don’t blame him at all. We had other teachers who paddled you with a cricket bat for far, far less.
No doubt they would have put me on Ritalin if they had it then.
Use a GoPro camera.
Damn. I missed my chance, it had one spot when I checked last night.
Well, someday!
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