I promised a better photo of Marshmallow. This time she has taken over Sam’s basket when he was busy doing something else. She would sometimes lay an egg in his basket. Once I found an egg underneath Sam. Perhaps he was hoping it would hatch!

Jj is for Jottings 25. Handwriting Boosts Brain Power.

When we write, we use whole strokes to depict a letter. In doing this, we activate parts of the brain responsible for thinking, memory and language. Writing engages many more parts of the brain than typing, quite apart from developing a greater range of fine motor skills.
A study in Psychological Science showed that people who took handwritten notes were better able to conceptualise and process information than people who typed their notes. Two groups of people watched a series of talks. One group took notes by hand and the other group typed their notes. After the lectures the participants were all distracted by other activities to reset their brains. They were then asked factual and conceptual questions about the talks. While there was no difference in how many facts both groups remembered, the typists struggled with the conceptual questions. Researchers found that the typists took down most of the material pretty much word for word because they could type much more quickly than they write. (I don’t – I keep reversing letters when I type and have to go back and correct it. However, I don’t claim to be normal!) The slower pace of writing, however, forces us to digest, process and conceptualise the information as we go, which enhances our ability to retain and recall the material.
The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience published a study that showed how adults learning a new language were better able to recall characters when they wrote them out by hand rather than using a keyboard. Writing notes by hand forces us to look at the page, and to process and commit the information to memory.
Research on children at Indiana University measured brain activity during handwriting. MRIs showed more brain activity when children wrote by hand than when they looked at images of letters.
Interestingly, top copywriters – people who write sales letters – say that the best way to learn how to write good copy is to copy out the best sales letters by hand many times over. That way the original writer’s strategies become embedded in the brain of the person copying out the same letter several times, giving them a wonderful base on which to build their own ideas. This does not work when the letters are typed many times over.