alt Hacker NewsThis is how it was explained to me by a tutor: handwriting is better for learning because it's slower. The need for brevity forces you to mentally engage the material in ways that are more conducive to understanding and recall.
If you can replicate that mental engagement while typing, you'd probably get similar results.
This makes a lot of sense to me in light of what we know about how learning happens. I have never seen any research on brain activity though, and my tutor didn't cite any.
Replies
IME it's not just about slower. It's about forcing you to think about how words go together, where line breaks fall, how you're laying out bullet points, etc.
Since you can change all of this on computers (or it happens automatically), you don't have to give it thought before writing it down.
I've heard this theory too—but I feel it doesn't match how we do anything else in life. For example, you could make typing slow too by forcing people to type with two fingers, or use a really tiny keyboard. Are touch typists worse at learning?
This doesn't really refute the theory—maybe touch typing is worse—but it doesn't match my logical intuition at all.