High-tech companies are seeking to capitalize on the power of handwriting, but there are other reasons to value the practice, says UW educational psychology professor .
鈥淲riting is the way we learn what we鈥檙e thinking,鈥� said Berninger, who studies the effect of handwriting on the human brain. 鈥淭he handwriting, the sequencing of the strokes, engages the thinking part of the mind.鈥�
Berninger was recently interviewed for a CBS This Morning about how tech companies are reviving the art of handwriting in a digital age. Microsoft鈥檚 Surface Pro 3 tablet allows users to write with a digital pen, and Austin, Texas-based year-old startup uses both human and robot handwriters to produce handwritten letters for clients.
The value of handwriting has been a topic of some debate in academic circles. The Common Core standards adopted in most states call for teaching children legible handwriting in kindergarten and first grade only, after which the focus is on keyboarding skills.
But several states, including California, Massachusetts, North Carolina and South Carolina, have recently moved to make cursive instruction mandatory. Some psychologists, neuroscientists and researchers including Berninger say there鈥檚 an important connection between handwriting and learning. Children taught to write learn to read earlier, generate ideas more easily and have a better ability to retain information, they say.
In a five-year of Seattle children in grades one through five, Berninger found that printing, cursive writing and using a keyboard each use related but different brain functions 鈥� underscoring that writing is a complex undertaking that draws on many neurological processes.
鈥淗andwriting requires the production of a letter form, stroke by stroke,鈥� Berninger said in the CBS interview. 鈥淭he act of producing something supports perception. So we need to output in order to improve our ability to process what we input from the environment.鈥�