Typing is becoming our preferred way of writing. Perhaps because of the relative recency of this change, very few studies have investigated typing from a psycholinguistic perspective. In addition, and despite obvious similarities between typing and handwriting, typing research has remained rather disconnected from handwriting research. The current study aimed at bridging this gap by evaluating how typing is affected by a number of psycholinguistic variables defined at the word, syllable, and letter levels. In a writing-to-dictation task, we assessed typing performance by measuring response accuracy, onset latencies -an index of response preparation and initiation -and interkeystroke intervals (IKIs) -an index of response execution processes. The lexical and sublexical factors revealed a composite pattern of effects. Lexical frequency improved response latencies and accuracy, while bigram frequency speeded up IKIs. Sound-spelling consistency improved latencies, but had an inhibitory effect on IKI. IKIs were also longer at syllable boundaries. Together, our findings can be fit within a framework for typed production that combines the previously developed theories of spelling and typing execution. At their interface, we highlight the need for an intermediate hierarchical stage, perhaps in the form of a graphemic buffer for typing.
Although the precision and reliability of response time (RT) measurements performed via Web-based interfaces have been evaluated, sequences of keystrokes have never been investigated in detail. Keystrokes often occur in much more rapid succession than RTs, and operating systems may interpret successive or concomitant keyboard events according to both automatic and user-based settings. Sequence keystroke timing could thus be more sensitive than single RTs to noise in online measurements. Here, we quantified the precision and reliability of timing measures performed during sequences of keystrokes. We used the JavaScript jsPsych library to create an experiment involving finger-movement sequences, and ran it online with 633 participants. We manipulated the structure of three keystroke motor sequences, targeting a replication of previous findings regarding both RTs and interkeystroke intervals (IKIs). Our online data accurately reproduced the original results and allowed for a novel assessment of demographic variables such as age and gender. In parallel, we also measured the objective timing accuracy of the jsPsych interface by using specialized hardware and software, showing a constant 60-ms delay for RTs and a 0-ms delay for IKIs across the sequences. The distribution of IKIs revealed quantizing for a majority of participants, most likely due to the sampling frequency of their USB keyboards. Overall, these findings indicate that JsPsych provides good reliability and accuracy in sequence keystroke timings for mental chronometry purposes, through online recordings.
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