![]() Given the prevalence of this “use it or loose it” explanation, the researchers were surprised when they found evidence that the typists never appear to memorize the key positions, not even when they are first learning to type. This allows you to think about other things while you performing the task but your conscious recollection of the details gradually fades away. Then, as you repeat the task, it becomes increasingly automatic. According to the widely held theory, when you perform a new task or the first time, you are conscious of each action and store the details in working memory. ![]() What did come as a surprise, however, was evidence that conflicts with the basic theory of automatic learning which holds that it starts out as a conscious process and gradually becomes unconscious with repetition. So scientists had assumed that typing also fell into this category, but had not tested it. Automatic behaviors of this type are surprisingly common, ranging from tying shoelaces to making coffee to factory assembly-line work to riding a bicycle and driving a car. For more than a century, scientists have recognized the existence of automatism: the ability to perform actions without conscious thought or intention. The fact that the typists did so poorly at identifying the position of specific keys didn’t come as a surprise. By contrast, they could accurately place an average of only 15 letters on a blank keyboard. On average, they typed 72 words per minute, moving their fingers to the correct keys six times per second with 94 percent accuracy. Then, they were shown a blank QWERTY keyboard and given 80 seconds to write the letters in the correct location. The participants completed a short typing test. The researchers recruited 100 university students and members from the surrounding community to participate in an experiment. ![]() “This demonstrates that we’re capable of doing extremely complicated things without knowing explicitly what we are doing,” said Vanderbilt University graduate student Kristy Snyder, the first author of the study, which was conducted under the supervision of Centennial Professor of Psychology Gordon Logan.Ī description of the research will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, which recently posted it online. It found that skilled typists can’t identify the positions of many of the keys on the QWERTY keyboard and that novice typists don’t appear to learn key locations in the first place. That is the conclusion of a study conducted by a team of cognitive psychologists at Vanderbilt and Kobe Universities.
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