What is the impact of handwriting on brain development in children

 

In today's technological age, when laptops and tablets have become more popular and everyone emphasizes typing on the keyboard; handwriting skills are slowly fading away; it raises questions about the usefulness of handwriting skills in the future.

You may not know that handwriting plays an important role in brain development; specially on Children's Brain. New brain research shows that the brains of children are more active when handwriting than typing on a computer keyboard; it helps children learn more and remember better.

According to Neuropsychology Professor Audrey van der Meer at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology )- "The use of pen and paper gives the brain more 'hooks' to hang your memories on. Writing by hand creates much more activity in the sensorimotor parts of the brain. A lot of senses are activated by pressing the pen on paper, seeing the letters you write and hearing the sound you make while writing. These sense experiences create contact between different parts of the brain and open the brain up for learning. We can learn better and remember better through writing"-(source: ScienceDaily)

Today schools are going more and more digital and no longer teaching children to write by hand in favour of digital learning, so children spend the most time online.

Even some teachers believe that keyboards create less frustration for children. They point out that children can write longer texts now, and are more motivated to write because they experience greater mastery with a keyboard. They think keyboards should be used in school because children see them everywhere outside. Also, keyboarding is easier and gives children a sense of reward more quickly as they achieve mastery. But this may be another part of life where there are rewards for greater effort and overcoming frustration.

According to an EdWeek Research Center survey, 84% of teachers said that elementary schools in their district had at least one device per child by March 2021. Much of the technology that was implemented in response to the pandemic still remains.

Childrens’ reliance on electronics often has negative effects on handwriting too. As children reach school age, they are required to possess particular pencil-holding and -use skills. They are also expected to possess a vast array of other functional abilities.

Why handwriting is important for kids,

Yes, digital learning is important, but it is “vital to maintain handwriting practice in school”, as it creates a vibrant platform for learning. Handwriting may appear to be a simple undertaking, a wide range of core abilities are necessary for its successful completion.

A child can focus on the higher-level features of writing composition and content when he or she can create legible writing with ease, speed, and minimal conscious effort. Children who have mastered it are more skilled and imaginative authors. Numerous standardised evaluations are based on written work, especially timed writing.

However, Learning to write by hand is a bit of a slower process, but it's important for children to go through the tiring phase of learning to write by hand. The intricate hand movements and the shaping of letters are beneficial in several ways. If you use a keyboard, you use the same movement for each letter. Writing by hand requires control of your fine motor skills and senses. It's important to put the brain in a learning state as often as possible. Writing letters on paper further develops and encodes new neural connections, which helps with future recognition of these letters.

Benefits of handwriting,

Many studies show that there are several reasons why writing by hand is a better option-

Writing by hands boost brain power

Boost cognitive skills

Increases focus

Improves memory

Sharpens aging minds

Improves creativity

Promotes sequencing and estimation

Creates a calming effect

How handwriting stimulates thinking,

"Handwriting increases neural activity in certain sections of the brain, similar to meditation"- according to Prof. Virginia Berninger of the University of Washington, who used functional magnetic resonance imaging to find that writing by hand activates the parts of the cerebral cortex responsible for memory and learning new information. This can be seen in the children’s work.

The researcher asked elementary school students of the second, fourth and sixth grades to write short essays by hand or on the computer and then analyzed the resulting texts. The result said- second-graders wrote more words faster, by pen than by keyboard; fourth- and sixth-graders were more likely to write complete sentences with a pen.

Even young children are more creative when using a pen. Other research found that kids produce more ideas when writing by hand. Essays produced by hand were more organized and insightful and had better grammar.

"It turned out that works, essays, for example, written by hand, were more imaginative and lexically diverse. A student becomes an experienced essay creator capable of expounding on a topic in a reasoned, coherent, and complete manner, which also affects thinking positively.  Students who write with a pen are able to reconstruct the main idea of the lecture and the conclusions that followed from it more easily. That’s because the brain works harder to write"- Prof. Berninger says.

Colby Wiley, PhD, a pediatric neuropsychologist at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital, said-"When writing by hand, you are not only activating the motor cortex to make your hand physically write, but also motor planning aspects of the visual cortex to visualize the letters in your mind, language networks in the central and temporal lobes to actually communicate, and networks associated with reading and spelling. These processes tie into the parts of the brain that have to do with learning and memory."

Cursive writing boosts cognitive skills in children,

Typing and printing don’t offer the same benefits as cursive writing. Learning to write in cursive is an important tool for cognitive development. Cursive writing actually trains the brain to use different parts of the brain for different functions, which helps with work efficiency.

When a child learns to read and write in cursive through consistent practice and repetition, they must use fine motor skills with visual and tactile processing abilities. The physical touch of the pen to the paper combined with the repetitive process improves both the cognitive function and development.

Cursive handwriting stimulates brain synapses and synchronicity between the left and right hemispheres, something absent from printing and typing. This is due to the fact that it requires more complicated physical and cognitive abilities. Because it stimulates the visual perception of letters, it enhances reading fluency as well. It predicts success in other areas since it has a beneficial influence on grades. 

It is seen that students who use cursive for the essay portion of the SAT score slightly higher than those who printed, which experts believe is because the speed and efficiency of writing in cursive allowed the students to focus on the content of their essays. Learning cursive also may be helpful for people with dyslexia.

Results from several studies have shown that handwriting is far better than typing for learning new letters and symbols, because activities such as printing letters by hand may help the brain learn. When people write letters by hand, they actively see and feel the letter being written or can see several different versions of that letter and pay more attention to what they are doing.

Undoubtedly, technology is a wonderful thing, but we can not ignore this fact that handwriting is essential to the production of innovative, well-crafted content, affecting both the flow and quality of the composition. Experts say handwriting is a fundamental skill that contributes to literacy.

Without legible and rapid handwriting, pupils will miss learning opportunities, underachieve, and possibly fall behind. Many formal qualifications continue to evaluate candidates primarily based on their handwriting.