Simon-Type Effects: Chronometric Evidence for Keypress Schemata in Typewriting.

Abstract

In 4 experiments, chronometric evidence for keypress schemata in typing was sought by presenting stimuli to be typed in positions that were displaced from a central fixation point. Reaction times were shorter when stimulus positions corresponded to keyboard locations of the letters to be typed, suggesting that position was an important part of the internal representation of the response. Experiment 1 presented single letters left and right of fixation. Experiment 2 presented single letters above and below fixation. Experiment 3 presented words left and right of fixation and found evidence of parallel activation of keypress schemata. Experiment 4 found no effect of the eccentricity of the keyboard locations and responding fingers, suggesting that response-location codes are categorical, not metric. The results are consistent with D. E. Rumelhart and D. A. Norman's (1982) theory of typewriting.

Do you know where your fingers have been? Explicit knowledge of the spatial layout of the keyboard in skilled typists

“…The spatial layout of words in text and letters within words is largely incompatible with the spatial layout of the keystrokes that express the words on the keyboard; for example, the letters appear in different left-to-right order in text and on the keyboard. Somehow, typists must resolve the incompatibility between these spatial representations to prevent interference (Logan, 2003). We suggest that hierarchical control with outer and inner loops may develop as a way of resolving this interference, separating the spatial information in text from that in the keyboard by encapsulating it in different feedback loops.…”

“…Skilled typists clearly have implicit knowledge of the spatial layout of the keyboard, because they choose the correct key location 5-6 times/sec when they are typing. Moreover, presenting letters and words to be typed in a spatial location incompatible with the keyboard location of the corresponding characters produces Simon-like interference effects (Logan, 2003; see also Rieger, 2004). Our question was whether this knowledge of the spatial layout of the keyboard is also explicit.…”

Pushing typists back on the learning curve: Contributions of multiple linguistic units in the acquisition of typing skill.

“…This involves one-to-many mappings from words to letters, which gives rise to hierarchically structured control that allows parallel processing of multiple keystrokes (e.g., Logan & Crump, 2011;Rumelhart & Norman, 1982). The letter-key associations provide direct translation from letters to keys (Logan, 2003), so that skilled typists are able to type corresponding keys without being explicitly aware of where the keys are located on the keyboard (Liu, Crump, & Logan, 2010;Snyder, Ashitaka, Shimada, Ulrich, & Logan, 2014). The key-finger associations also support rapid keystrokes, so that skilled typists type the correct keys without being aware of which finger or the hand they use to type a specific key (Logan & Crump, 2009;Snyder & Logan, 2013).…”

Electrophysiological Evidence for Parallel Response Selection in Skilled Typists

“…Behavioral evidence from priming studies (Crump & Logan, 2010;Logan, 2003) and video recordings of finger movements (Flanders & Soechting, 1992) suggest parallel activation of responses in skilled typists, but these effects could occur before or after response selection (Salthouse, 1986). …”

“…We used three sets of 60 three-to fiveletter words taken from Logan (2003). In each set, half of the words began with a left-hand keystroke and half began with a right-hand keystroke.…”