The present study investigated cognitive effort of handwriting and typing of undergraduate students. In Experiment 1, we used a secondary reaction time task to assess the cognitive effort required by undergraduates when carrying out handwriting and typing copying tasks. Students had longer reaction times, indicating greater cognitive effort, when typing than when handwriting. In experiments 2a and 2b, we investigated whether the additional cost of typing affected an ongoing activity. Participants performed a short-term memory task that required them to type or write by hand words to recall. As Experiment 1 suggested that typewriting was more effortful than handwriting, so it should leave fewer resources to devote to memorizing words, which would result in a better handwritten than typed recall. Overall, handwriting led to better recall than typing, particularly with the longest lists of words. This implies that, even in undergraduates, typing is still more effortful than handwriting and therefore has a negative impact on performance on an ongoing activity. The educational implications of the findings are discussed.

本研究调查了大学生的笔迹和打字的认知能力。在实验1中，我们使用次要反应时间任务来评估大学生在执行手写和打字复印任务时所需的认知努力。与打字相比，打字时学生的反应时间更长，表明其付出了更大的认知努力。在实验2a和2b中，我们调查了打字的额外费用是否影响正在进行的活动。参与者执行了一项短期记忆任务，要求他们键入或手写输入以进行回忆。如实验1所示，打字比手写要省力，因此打字应留出较少的资源来记忆单词，与手写回想相比，手写会更好。总体而言，手写比打字带来了更好的回忆，特别是最长的单词列表。这意味着，即使是在大学生中，打字仍然比手写更省力，因此对正在进行的活动的表现有负面影响。研究结果的教育意义进行了讨论。