Comment by deafpolygon 5 days ago
that's a myth; while it's true that handwriting does lend to better recall, it's the process of breaking down what to write down (thus spending more time making sense of it) that helps you remember.. not the 'muscle memory' everyone talks about. You can do the same thing in digital tools (typing out notes, structuring notes, etc) and sometimes you can do it faster.
Right, there's no "thought processing" that often happens when you write by hand. Most people tend to transcribe when they are taking notes with a keyboard, which can be akin to riding a bicycle (e.g. muscle memory without deep thought).
Not a single source of truth.
The often cited study is [3] which shows longform writing to be more beneficial - it also comes to this conclusion: "Although more notes are beneficial, at least to a point, if the notes are taken indiscriminately or by mindlessly transcribing content, as is more likely the case on a lap-top than when notes are taken longhand, the benefit dis-appears."
There was a follow-up study made (see [1], [2]) that showed it made no difference in the end. It's what you do with it afterwards that really matters.
Long story short? One form is not more superior to other, but I find typed text (in a digital document) easier to manipulate, transfer to other tools (i.e. Anki) and less friction when I'm thinking as I type.
---
[1] https://www.themantic-education.com/ibpsych/2023/01/20/note-...
[2] https://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2022/01/is-handwriting...
[3] https://brucehayes.org/Teaching/papers/MuellerAndOppenheimer...
Pretty sure all those studies were comparing laptop (typing) to handwriting.
Here is the first one I found: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797614524581