Not very much, according to many
educators. The Common Core standards, which have been adopted in most states,
call for teaching legible writing, but only in kindergarten and first grade.
After that, the emphasis quickly shifts to proficiency on the keyboard.
But psychologists and
neuroscientists say it is far too soon to declare handwriting a relic of the
past. New evidence suggests that the links between handwriting and broader
educational development run deep.
Children not only learn to read
more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better
able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just
what we write that matters — but how.
“When we
write, a unique neural circuit is automatically activated,” said Stanislas Dehaene, a
psychologist at the Collège de France in Paris. “There is a core recognition of
the gesture in the written word, a sort of recognition by mental simulation in
your brain.
“And it seems that this circuit is
contributing in unique ways we didn’t realize,” he continued. “Learning is made
easier.”
A 2012 study led by Karin James, a psychologist
at Indiana University, lent support to that view. Children who had not yet
learned to read and write were presented with a letter or a shape on an index
card and asked to reproduce it in one of three ways: trace the image on a page
with a dotted outline, draw it on a blank white sheet, or type it on a computer.
They were then placed in a brain scanner and shown the image again.
The researchers found that the
initial duplication process mattered a great deal. When children had drawn a
letter freehand, they exhibited increased activity in three areas of the brain
that are activated in adults when they read and write: the left fusiform gyrus,
the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior parietal cortex.
By contrast, children who typed or
traced the letter or shape showed no such effect. The activation was
significantly weaker.
Dr. James attributes the
differences to the messiness inherent in free-form handwriting: Not only must we
first plan and execute the action in a way that is not required when we have a
traceable outline, but we are also likely to produce a result that is highly
variable.
Photo
Karin James, a psychologist at
Indiana University, used a scanner to see how handwriting affected activity in
children’s brains.Credit A. J. Mast for The New York Times
That variability may itself be a
learning tool. “When a kid produces a messy letter,” Dr. James said, “that might
help him learn it.”
Our brain must understand that
each possible iteration of, say, an “a” is the same, no matter how we see it
written. Being able to decipher the messiness of each “a” may be more helpful in
establishing that eventual representation than seeing the same result
repeatedly.
“This is
one of the first demonstrations of the brain being changed because of that
practice,” Dr. James said.
In another study, Dr. James is
comparing children who physically form letters with those who only watch others
doing it. Her observations suggest that it is only the actual effort that
engages the brain’s motor pathways and delivers the learning benefits of
handwriting.The effect goes well beyond letter recognition. In a study that followed children in grades two through
five, Virginia Berninger, a
psychologist at the University of Washington, demonstrated that printing,
cursive writing, and typing on a keyboard are all associated with distinct and
separate brain patterns — and each results in a distinct end product. When the
children composed text by hand, they not only consistently produced more words
more quickly than they did on a keyboard, but expressed more ideas. And brain imaging in the oldest
subjects suggested that the connection between writing and idea generation went
even further. When these children were asked to come up with ideas for a
composition, the ones with better handwriting exhibited greater neural
activation in areas associated with working memory — and increased overall
activation in the reading and writing networks.Photo
Samples of handwriting by young
children. Dr. James found that when children drew a letter freehand, they
exhibited increased activity in three significant areas of the brain, which
didn’t happen when they traced or typed the letter.Credit Karin James
It now
appears that there may even be a difference between printing and cursive writing
— a distinction of particular importance as the teaching of cursive disappears
in curriculum after curriculum. In dysgraphia, a condition where the ability to
write is impaired, usually after brain injury, the deficit
can take on a curious form: In some people, cursive writing remains relatively
unimpaired, while in others, printing does.
In alexia, or impaired reading
ability, some individuals who are unable to process print can still read
cursive, and vice versa — suggesting that the two writing modes activate
separate brain networks and engage more cognitive resources than would be the
case with a single approach.
Dr. Berninger goes so far as to
suggest that cursive writing may train self-control ability in a way that other
modes of writing do not, and some researchers argue that it may even be a path
to treating dyslexia. A 2012 review suggests that
cursive may be particularly effective for individuals with developmental
dysgraphia — motor-control difficulties in forming letters — and that it may aid
in preventing the reversal and inversion of letters.
Cursive or not, the benefits of
writing by hand extend beyond childhood. For adults, typing may be a fast and
efficient alternative to longhand, but that very efficiency may diminish our
ability to process new information. Not only do we learn letters better when we
commit them to memory through writing, memory and learning ability in general
may benefit.
Two
psychologists, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the
University of California, Los Angeles, have reported that in both
laboratory settings and real-world classrooms, students learn better when they
take notes by hand than when they type on a keyboard. Contrary to earlier
studies attributing the difference to the distracting effects of computers, the
new research suggests that writing by hand allows the student to process a
lecture’s contents and reframe it — a process of reflection and manipulation
that can lead to better understanding and memory encoding.
Not every expert is persuaded that
the long-term benefits of handwriting are as significant as all that. Still, one
such skeptic, the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, says the new research is, at the very
least, thought-provoking.
“With handwriting, the very act of
putting it down forces you to focus on what’s important,” he said. He added,
after pausing to consider, “Maybe it helps you think better.”
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기