Prof Karin James' Research Sailing the Popular Media

Professor Karin James' cutting-edge research on the diverse benefits of writing by hand has been riding a wave of interest in popular media. Last year it was featured prominently in the Wall Street Journal, in an article that received almost 10,000 Facebook "Likes." Since then, her work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune and LA Times, The Globe and Mail, and throughout the blogosphere. Her research finds that handwriting, which many consider to be a forgotten skill, actually has strong benefits beyond fine penmanship. Learning to actively write on paper improves letter recognition (a strong predictor of reading ability) in ways above and beyond merely learning the appearance of letters.