The Development of Typewriting Skill.

Abstract : Typewriting, like handwriting, is an example of a highly practiced motor skill. Professional typists spend about a year learning to type and accumulate thousands of hours of practice during their working lives. I studied 18 typists, ranging from beginning students in a typing class (about 1 keystroke/second) to expert professional typists (about 20 keystrokes/second). All typists became faster with practice, but the rate and amount of improvement varied for different classes of keystroke sequences, and the pattern of keystroke times displayed qualitative changes with the development of typewriting skill. For example, double letters, such as dd, were the fastest keystroke sequences for student typists, but they were among the slowest sequences for professional typists. In addition, the relative variability of the interstroke intervals decreased with learning. The most striking changes were for one-finger non-doubles, such as de, which were the most variable intervals for beginners and the lest variable intervals for experts. Finally, the correlation between successive interstroke intervals for some letter sequences became more negative with learning. (Author)