The researcher Joana Acha explored how manual and keyboard practice influenced children’s abilities in their reading and writing learning process. 5-year-olds were taught an artificial alphabet using different techniques, and the conclusion was that children who are trained with pencil and paper assimilate new letters and words better.

Nowadays, it is common for children’s classrooms to have digital resources to be used as tools for certain learning processes. For example, there are computer programs geared towards children who are learning to read and write. Since the exercises that they propose are to be done on computer, the students press keys and buttons, and do away with pencil and paper. To measure the impact of these typing-based methods, a UPV/EHU study made a comparison to analyse the effects of manual and keyboard training on children’s skills. “As children write less and less by hand, we wanted to explore the impact of this on alphabetic and orthographic skills. In other words, we wanted to see whether the ability to learn letters and to assimilate and remember word structure develops differently through manual training or the use of keyboards. We concluded that the children who used their hands obtained the best results,” explained researcher Joana Acha.

To reach this conclusion, an experiment was conducted with 5 to 6-year-olds. This age was chosen because it is the most favourable moment in their development. This is in fact when they begin to acquire the ability to read and write. So 50 children with basic reading comprehension were taught 9 letters of the Georgian and Armenian alphabets, as well as 16 pseudowords invented by the researchers by combining the letters.

“The aim was to use letters and words that were completely new to the children to make sure they were learning from scratch. In fact, the studies carried out so far used the alphabets in the children’s culture, so it is not so easy to find out the extent to which they did not know the symbols presented,” said Acha.

So all the students were taught new letters and words, but not all in the same way: half of them were asked to copy them by hand and the other half with keyboards. That way the UPV/EHU study was able to focus on the importance of the graphomotor function. In other words, what kind of effect does moving the hand have on the reading and writing process. In fact, when we write on keyboards we do not trace the shape of the letter and so the graphomotor function exerts less influence when it comes to assimilating letter and word structure. By contrast, writing by hand exerts a greater influence.

“Once we had taught each group of children the new letters and words and trained them using one method, we submitted them to three tests to assess the knowledge acquired. We measured their ability to identify, write and pronounce both the letters and the pseudowords, and the results clearly indicated that those who had practised manually developed greater skill. In particular, the difference was clear with the pseudowords; almost everyone who had learnt on computer did not complete the exercises on letter sequences correctly. So our work confirms that the graphomotor function is essential in memorizing letters and word structures,” explained Acha.

Variability also exerts an influence

But they did not look at the impact of the degree of hand movement alone. The groups who were working by hand and with keyboards were divided into two subgroups from the start. During the teaching of the letters and the words, among those who were working with pencils, some were asked to follow the guides marked with small dots (technique of low variability). The others, by contrast, practised without any reference at all: copying freely on to the blank page (great variability). They did the same with those who were working on computer: some always used the same font for training (e.g. Tahoma), and others, more than one. That way, the researchers were able to analyse the influence of the shape variability factor in addition to the grapho-motor function.

What they saw was that all those who had been trained by hand were more competent than all those who had worked with keyboards, but even among those who had practised with pencil and paper, there were differences. Those who had been trained freely obtained the best results. “So we concluded that while it helps children to have to trace in order to practice at first, once they’re able to make more or less small, precise movements, it’s advisable to move on to free writing. However, what is most clear is the need to prioritize manual practice in the learning processes. They learn best from hand movements and so technological devices should only be used in a complementary way,” said Acha.

Additional information

Joana Acha is a researcher and lecturer in Psychological Processes and Development at the Faculty of Psychology. She lectures in the degree course in Psychology, in the Master’s courses in Early Intervention and the Cognitive Neuroscience of Language. Her main research topics are the development of reading comprehension and the methods used to promote it. She is a member of the HAEZI research group and also cooperates with various organizations. For example, she produced this paper together with the University of Valencia.