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

Yamaguchi, Motonori; Logan, Gordon D.

doi:10.1037/xlm0000026

Cited by 14 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 53 publications

(126 reference statements)

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“…It is possible that different chunks are only different manifestations of the same representational structure (Chase & Simon, 1973), but it is also possible that there are different representational structures corresponding to different types of chunks. In recent studies, there was evidence of chunking at the inner loop (i.e., keystroke level) but not in the outer loop when skilled typists learned typing with a new key position of a letter on the keyboard (Yamaguchi & Logan, 2014a …”

Section: General Discussion Memory Chunking In Typewritingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chunking of letters in words depends on the knowledge of the words; typists have to process letters in unfamiliar nonwords as separate chunks, which pushes typists back on the learning curve by preventing them from utilizing their typing skill (Yamaguchi & Logan, 2014a, 2014b). The present study investigated the development of chunks by having typists type nonwords.…”

Section: Chunking In Hierarchical Control Of Skilled Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To close the perceptionaction link, the perceptual elements could be mapped one-to-one, directly onto the corresponding motor elements without chunks, but this creates a large cognitive load. The development of memory chunks bridges these input and output hierarchies and closes the perception-action link more economically without having to translate each perceptual element to the corresponding motor element.Chunking of letters in words depends on the knowledge of the words; typists have to process letters in unfamiliar nonwords as separate chunks, which pushes typists back on the learning curve by preventing them from utilizing their typing skill (Yamaguchi & Logan, 2014a, 2014b). The present study investigated the development of chunks by having typists type nonwords.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Pushing typists back on the learning curve: Memory chunking in the hierarchical control of skilled typewriting.

Yamaguchi¹,

Logan²

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Hierarchical control of skilled performance depends on the ability of higher-level control to process several lower-level units as a single chunk. The present study investigated the development of hierarchical control of skilled typewriting, focusing on the process of memory chunking. In the first three experiments, skilled typists typed words or nonwords under concurrent memory load. Memory chunks developed and consolidated into long-term memory when the same typing materials were repeated in six consecutive trials, but chunks did not develop when repetitions were spaced. However, when concurrent memory load was removed during training, memory chunks developed more efficiently with longer lags between repetitions than shorter lags. From these results, it is proposed that memory chunking requires two representations of the same letter string to be maintained simultaneously in short-term memory, one representation from the current trial and the other from an earlier trial that is either retained from the immediately preceding trial or retrieved from long-term memory (i.e., study state retrieval).Keywords: Skill acquisition; chunking; spacing effect; concurrent memory load; typing. MEMORY CHUNKING IN TYPEWRITINGAlthough computer technologies have made automation of complex tasks possible, many human activities still require expert skills. The acquisition of these skills depends on extended training, and the nature of the acquisition process remains of great interest in educational and professional contexts as well as in ordinary households. For instance, school children spend much of their days learning new skills, such as numeracy and literacy skills, that will be the bases of their success in the future. One such basic skill that has become prevalent in modern society is typewriting. Many aspects of everyday activities rely on computers that require typing on a keyboard. In industrialized countries, people start typing at the age of 10 or younger and have about 10 years of experience by the time when they enter a college. In the United States, the majority of college students are highly skilled typists, having a semester of typing lessons and capable of typing at a rate of 70 words per minute (WPM) on average (Logan & Crump, 2011). As much as typewriting is of practical importance for everyday activities, it has also been of interest to researchers as it provides a useful test-bed for understanding the mechanisms underlying the acquisition and the control of skilled performance. Typewriting is particularly an ideal subject for the purpose of understanding the acquisition of complex motor skill, due to its prevalence and the amount of training. Therefore, the present study aimed at gaining the understanding of complex skills by investigating the process by which typing skill is acquired. Chunking in Hierarchical Control of Skilled PerformanceNovice typists start with a typing method known as hunt-and-peck by which they search the keyboard for an appropriate key and move a finger to the key location, typic...

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Section: General Discussion Memory Chunking In Typewritingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Chunking In Hierarchical Control Of Skilled Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Pushing typists back on the learning curve: Memory chunking in the hierarchical control of skilled typewriting.

Yamaguchi¹,

Logan²

2016

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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“…Consistently with extant literature on typing, we assumed that words represent chunking units for response planning, where the system computes motor programs for the whole sequence of movements needed to type the next word. As such, these measures should capture the planning phase of each chunk (word) of the response (e.g., Crump & Logan, 2010;Logan & Crump, 2011;Yamaguchi & Logan, 2014a;2014b). For response execution, we analyzed the IKIs within the sequences of responses.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Yamaguchi and Logan (2014b) examined the contribution of different levels of linguistic units (words, digraphs, and letters) on learning new letter-to-key associations. In their experiment, they disrupted established letterto-key associations by switching keyboard locations for a few target letters (i.e., switchedlocation letters).…”

Section: Chaining and Position Codingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The serial order of response units in word production: The case of typing.

Scaltritti¹,

Longcamp²,

Alario³

2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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The selection and ordering of response units (phonemes, letters, keystrokes) represents a transversal issue across different modalities of language production. Here, the issue of serial order was investigated with respect to typewriting. Following seminal investigations in the spoken modality, we conducted an experiment where participants typed as many times as possible a pair of words during a fixed time-window. The two words either shared their first two keystrokes, the last two ones, all the keystrokes, or were unrelated. Fine-grained performance measures were recorded at the level of individual keystrokes. In contrast with previous results from the spoken modality, we observed an overall facilitation for words sharing the initial keystrokes. In addition, the initial overlap briefly delayed the execution of the following keystroke. The results are discussed with reference to different theoretical perspectives on serial order, with a particular attention to the competing accounts offered by position coding models and chaining models. Our findings point to potential major differences between the speaking and typing modalities in terms of interactive activation between lexical and response units processing levels.

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Effects of motor restrictions on preparatory brain activity

et al. 2021

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Modifying established motor skills is a challenging endeavor due to proactive interference from undesired old to desired new actions, calling for high levels of cognitive control. Motor restrictions may facilitate the modification of motor skills by rendering undesired responses physically impossible, thus reducing demands to response inhibition. Here we studied behavioral and EEG effects of rule changes to typing in skilled touch-typists. The respective rule change—typing without using the left index finger—was either implemented per instruction only or with an additional motor restriction. In both groups, the rule change elicited delays and more errors in typing, indicating the occurrence of proactive interference. While stimulus-locked ERPs did not exhibit prominent effects of rule change or group, response-locked ERPs revealed that the time courses of preparatory brain activity preceding typing responses depended on the presence of motor restriction. Although further research is necessary to corroborate our findings, they indicate a novel brain correlate that represents changes in inhibitory response preparation induced by short-term motor restrictions.

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

Cited by 14 publications

References 53 publications

Pushing typists back on the learning curve: Memory chunking in the hierarchical control of skilled typewriting.

Pushing typists back on the learning curve: Memory chunking in the hierarchical control of skilled typewriting.

The serial order of response units in word production: The case of typing.

Effects of motor restrictions on preparatory brain activity

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