In a series of experiments at Princeton University and the University of California, Los Angeles, students
were randomly assigned either laptops or pen and paper for note-taking at a lecture. Those whom had
used laptops demonstrated a substantially weaker understanding of the lecture, as measured by a
standardized test, than the group using pen and paper. The researchers hypothesized that because
students can type faster than they can write, the lecturer's words flowed right to the students' typing
fingers without stopping in their brains for substantive processing.