Handwritten notes make you smarter

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Do you write by hand or take notes on your smartphone? The second method is obviously more convenient. Recording something electronically can be fast and accurate. In addition, such a note can be easily sent to other devices, sent to friends, printed … But psychologists are sure: we need to return to the handwritten text. After all, it is he who makes us smarter and helps us learn.

We type quickly.

We write - slowly.

Surprisingly, this is why you need to manually take notes and take notes while studying.

Psychologists Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California conducted an astonishing study that found that a laptop is the worst tool for taking notes and taking notes during lectures. …

Early research suggested that taking notes on a laptop is inconvenient because you can often be distracted by games, the Internet, or third-party programs. But it turns out that the advantage of handwritten note-taking is different: when you write, you slow down the speed of perception of new information.

When the note-taking process gets slower, you memorize more.

This is how it works. If a person knows how to type quickly and with high quality, he will be able to record a lecture by ear almost word for word. But taking shorthand does not mean learning; this process does not require analytical, critical thinking. While you are typing the words after the lecturer, the brain is not involved in the process of studying the material in any way.

In other words, your brain is not receiving the signal, "This information is very important." Therefore, as soon as you close the document, your mind will erase everything you hear for further effective work.

But if you write out notes by hand, you physically cannot write down everything that the lecturer says.

Instead, you will search for the most important things, highlight the key points, and structure information on the go. It is very difficult to write down what you do not understand, and such places will become obvious blank spots in your outline that you will need to return to in order to understand new material.

Handwritten notes require active brain activity, which means that you will remember almost everything that you write down. The more you try to understand something, the more you signal your brain: “This is important! I need this information!"

Mueller and Oppenheimer concluded that instead of doing stenography, students need to process information by retelling it in their own words and writing it down as a synopsis. This is critical for learning.

The advantage of handwritten notes - even though they disappear from our daily life - has been described by many psychologists. They argue that when we write by hand, we use those parts of the brain that are responsible for forming memories. Even children get more creative by writing down their ideas on a piece of paper.

French psychologist Stanislas Dehaene argues that we all need to move away from the keyboard, as writing activates a unique neural circuit in our brain.

Scientists did not know about these processes before, but now they are sure: handwritten text stimulates our mind and makes the learning process easier.