{"id":134,"date":"2014-06-02T18:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-02T18:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/test.neurecall.com:8888\/blog\/?p=134"},"modified":"2025-06-03T01:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T01:59:13","slug":"handwriting-vs-typing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/handwriting-vs-typing\/","title":{"rendered":"Handwriting vs Typing: activation of a \u201creading circuit\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">A <em>New York Times <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/03\/science\/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html\">article<\/a> by Maria Konnikova\u00a0cites a series of studies showing separate neural activations associated with printing, cursive (longhand) handwriting vs typing by children (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/16390289\">Berninger et al., 2006<\/a> <em>Dev Neuropsychol<\/em>), and greater activation of a \u201creading circuit\u201d during subsequent character recognition in children who had printed rather than typed or traced (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S2211949312000038\">James &amp; Engelhardt, 2012<\/a> <em>Trends Neurosci Educ<\/em>). Researchers also found better performance on conceptual questions (even a week later) among students who were handwriting vs typing their classroom notes (<a href=\"http:\/\/pss.sagepub.com\/content\/25\/6\/1159\">Mueller &amp; Oppenheimer, 2014<\/a> <em>Psychol Sci<\/em>)\u2014possibly because students who type can transcribe lectures verbatim without processing the words (even when warned not to engage in verbatim transcription). (Performance on factual recall questions was similar for those who took notes by handwriting or keyboard.) See also the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2014\/05\/to-remember-a-lecture-better-take-notes-by-hand\/361478\/\">article<\/a> by Robinson Meyer in <em>The Atlantic<\/em>. The Konnikova article also cites (without attribution) the finding that both dysgraphia and alexia can be specific to either printed text or cursive writing, and mentions a review suggesting that cursive may help developmental dysgraphics learn to write without reversingand inverting letters (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.intechopen.com\/books\/dyslexia-a-comprehensive-and-international-approach\/the-contribution-of-handwriting-and-spelling-remediation-to-overcoming-dyslexia\">Montgomery, 2012<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/thought-catalog-RdmLSJR-tq8-unsplash.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" data-id=\"2006\" src=\"https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/thought-catalog-RdmLSJR-tq8-unsplash.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-2006\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/thought-catalog-RdmLSJR-tq8-unsplash.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/thought-catalog-RdmLSJR-tq8-unsplash-250x167.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/thought-catalog-RdmLSJR-tq8-unsplash-120x80.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Photo by <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@thoughtcatalog?utm_content=creditCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=unsplash\">Thought Catalog<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/photos\/person-holding-pencil-writing-on-notebook-RdmLSJR-tq8?utm_content=creditCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=unsplash\">Unsplash<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New York Times article by Maria Konnikova\u00a0cites a series of studies showing separate neural activations associated with printing, cursive (longhand) handwriting vs typing by children (Berninger et al., 2006 Dev Neuropsychol), and greater activation of a \u201creading circuit\u201d during subsequent character recognition in children who had printed rather than typed or traced (James &amp;&#8230; <a class=\"view-article\" href=\"https:\/\/www.syngli.com\/blog\/handwriting-vs-typing\/\">View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.4 - 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