Abstract

Technology has had a great impact on education today. Computer skills are necessary in order to complete many school assignments, and typing on the computer has become a main writing method for younger generations (Burnhart & Goldinger, 2010). Many college students bring their computers in the classroom, and more and more students have started to take notes by typing on their computer instead of handwriting their notes. The question to this convenient society is whether the new writing method, typing, affects students’ memory abilities in a classroom situation. The current study was conducted to determine if handwriting or typing was the better method of writing in order to memorize unfamiliar English words. Twenty-eight students were recruited from the Lindenwood Participant Pool (the LPP) for this study. The participants were asked to complete two sets of conditions; one to remember and type five unfamiliar words (meaning words that you may not encounter very often), to solve the Sudoku puzzle, and then to recall the words which they learned earlier; another condition to write down five different English words on the piece of the paper instead of typing. The paired sample t-test was used to examine the mean score of the test difference between the handwriting and the typing condition. The findings show that there was no significant difference between handwriting and typing for remembering the new words.

Recommended Citation

Shinohara, Ai (2013) "Does the Difference between Handwriting and Typing Influence Memory Ability?," Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal: Vol. 1: Iss. 15, Article 12.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/psych_journals/vol1/iss15/12