Episode 19 | The Pen vs. The Keyboard

Episode SummaryA skilled typist captures roughly 40 words per minute. A skilled handwriter sustains maybe 20. A lecturer speaks at about 150. The arithmetic of those three numbers is the entire story of note taking research, and it explains why one of the most famous findings in educational psychology turned out to be both right and wrong at the same time.In this episode we follow nearly a century of research, from Charles Crawford's 1925 baseline to Mueller and Oppenheimer's headline grabbing 2014 paper "The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard," through the multi study replication arc that quietly dismantled its causal claim. We examine the encoding versus storage framework that has organized the field since Di Vesta and Gray, the neuroscience of letter formation, the bundling logic of the Cornell system, and the surprisingly powerful drawing effect. The deeper lesson is that the medium is mostly a proxy: what determines whether note taking becomes learning is whether the act of taking the note involves real time processing or mere transcription.Key Topics CoveredThe arithmetic of note taking: 40 wpm typing vs. 20 wpm handwriting vs. 150 wpm lecturingA century of consistent findings: Crawford (1925), Hartley and Cameron (1967), Kiewra's capture rates of 25 to 35 percentThe encoding versus external storage framework (Di Vesta and Gray, 1972 and 1973)Kiewra's three cell taxonomy and the counterintuitive "note having" findingWhy review is doing most of the work: Carter and Van Matre (1975), Kiewra (1985)Mueller and Oppenheimer's 2014 study and the verbatim transcription mechanismThe failed paraphrase intervention: instruction overridden by affordance (12.11% vs. 12.07%)The replication arc: Morehead et al. (2019), Urry et al. (2021), pooled g = 0.04What replicated vs. what did not: descriptive verbatim effect yes, causal learning effect noThe neuroscience of handwriting: James's pre literate children, Longcamp's sensorimotor tracesThe NTNU EEG findings and the Pinet and Longcamp methodological commentaryThe Cornell system's five Rs and why it bundles every validated mechanism on one pageStylus on tablet as motor middle ground: Umejima et al. (2021) on paper vs. tabletThe drawing effect (Wammes, Meade, and Fernandes): roughly twice the recall rateThe deeper lesson: medium is a proxy for processingResearchers MentionedCharles C. Crawford : Author of the 1925 study that established the foundational note taking findingFrank Di Vesta and Susan Gray (1972, 1973) : Originators of the encoding versus external storage distinctionKenneth Kiewra (University of Nebraska) : The most prolific researcher in the note taking literature; the encoding/storage taxonomy and the matrix format finding both come from his programPam Mueller (Princeton, then University of South Carolina) : Lead author of the 2014 "Pen Is Mightier" paperDaniel Oppenheimer (UCLA, then Carnegie Mellon) : Co author of the 2014 paper and the verbatim transcription hypothesisJohn Dunlosky (Kent State) : Co author of the most comprehensive review of effective learning techniques and lead replicator of Mueller and OppenheimerKent Morehead and Katherine Rawson (Kent State) : Co authors of the 2019 replication and extensionHeather Urry (Tufts) : Lead author of the 2021 preregistered direct replication with mini meta analysisKarin Harman James (Indiana University) : Neuroscientific anchor for the developmental letter learning literatureMarieke Longcamp (Aix Marseille University) : Sensorimotor traces in adult letter recognitionAudrey van der Meer and Ruud van der Weel (NTNU) : The handwriting EEG program at the Norwegian University of Science and TechnologyWalter Pauk (Cornell) : Inventor of the Cornell note taking system in 1962Jeffrey Wammes, Melissa Meade, and Myra Fernandes (Waterloo) : The drawing effect programKey Studies and SourcesCrawford, C. C. (1925). "The correlation between lecture notes and quiz papers." Journal of Educational Psychology, 16(5), 282 to 291.Di Vesta, F. J., and Gray, G. S. (1972). "Listening and note taking." Journal of Educational Psychology, 63(1), 8 to 14.Carter, J. F., and Van Matre, N. H. (1975). "Note taking versus note having." Journal of Educational Psychology, 67(6), 900 to 904.Kiewra, K. A., DuBois, N. F., Christian, D., McShane, A., Meyerhoffer, M., and Roskelley, D. (1991). "Note taking functions and techniques." Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(2), 240 to 245.Kobayashi, K. (2005). "What limits the encoding effect of note taking? A meta analytic examination." Contemporary Educational Psychology, 30(2), 242 to 262.Bui, D. C., Myerson, J., and Hale, S. (2013). "Note taking with computers: Exploring alternative strategies for improved recall." Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 299 to 309.Mueller, P. A., and Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). "The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking." Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159 to 1168.Morehead, K., Dunlosky, J., and Rawson, K. A. (2019). "How much mightier is the pen than the keyboard for note taking?" Educational Psychology Review, 31(3), 753 to 780.Urry, H. L., Crittle, C. S., Floerke, V. A., et al. (2021). "Don't ditch the laptop just yet: A direct replication of Mueller and Oppenheimer's (2014) Study 1." Psychological Science, 32(3), 326 to 339.Allen, M., LeFebvre, L., LeFebvre, L., and Bourhis, J. (2020). "Is the pencil mightier than the keyboard?" Southern Communication Journal, 85(3), 143 to 154.James, K. H., and Engelhardt, L. (2012). "The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre literate children." Trends in Neuroscience and Education, 1(1), 32 to 42.Longcamp, M., et al. (2008). "Learning through hand or typewriting influences visual recognition of new graphic shapes." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20(5), 802 to 815.Askvik, E. O., van der Weel, F. R., and van der Meer, A. L. H. (2020). "The importance of cursive handwriting over typewriting for learning in the classroom." Frontiers in Psychology, 11:1810.Umejima, K., Ibaraki, T., Yamazaki, T., and Sakai, K. L. (2021). "Paper notebooks vs. mobile devices: Brain activation differences during memory retrieval." Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 15:634158.Wammes, J. D., Meade, M. E., and Fernandes, M. A. (2016). "The drawing effect: Evidence for reliable and robust memory benefits in free recall." Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(9), 1752 to 1776.Pauk, W. (1962). How to Study in College (1st ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Key Numbers to Remember150 words per minute : the speed at which a typical lecturer speaks20 to 22 words per minute : the speed a hand can sustain in writing40 words per minute : the speed of a skilled typist25 to 35 percent : Kiewra's estimate of important lecture ideas a student typically captures40 percent : ...