Content uploaded by Kristy Marie Snyder
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Kristy Marie Snyder
Content may be subject to copyright.
1 23
Attention, Perception, &
Psychophysics
ISSN 1943-3921
Atten Percept Psychophys
DOI 10.3758/s13414-013-0548-4
What skilled typists don’t know about the
QWERTY keyboard
Kristy M.Snyder, Yuki Ashitaka,
Hiroyuki Shimada, Jana E.Ulrich &
Gordon D.Logan
1 23
Your article is protected by copyright and all
rights are held exclusively by Psychonomic
Society, Inc.. This e-offprint is for personal
use only and shall not be self-archived
in electronic repositories. If you wish to
self-archive your article, please use the
accepted manuscript version for posting on
your own website. You may further deposit
the accepted manuscript version in any
repository, provided it is only made publicly
available 12 months after official publication
or later and provided acknowledgement is
given to the original source of publication
and a link is inserted to the published article
on Springer's website. The link must be
accompanied by the following text: "The final
publication is available at link.springer.com”.
What skilled typists don’t know about the QWERTY keyboard
Kristy M. Snyder &Yuk i A sh itaka &Hiroyuki Shimada &
Jana E. Ulrich &Gordon D. Logan
#Psychonomic Society, Inc. 2013
Abstract We conducted four experiments to investigate
skilled typists’explicit knowledge of the locations of keys
on the QWERTY keyboard, with three procedures: free recall
(Exp.1), cued recall (Exp.2), and recognition (Exp.3). We
found that skilled typists’explicit knowledge of key locations
is incomplete and inaccurate. The findings are consistent with
theories of skilled performance and automaticity that associate
implicit knowledge with skilled performance and explicit
knowledge with novice performance. In Experiment4,we
investigated whether novice typists acquire more complete
explicit knowledge of key locations when learning to touch-
type. We had skilled QWERTY typists complete a Dvorak
touch-typing tutorial. We then tested their explicit knowledge
of the Dvorak and QWERTYkey locations with the freerecall
task. We found no difference in explicit knowledge of the two
keyboards, suggesting that typists know little about key loca-
tions on the keyboard, whether they are exposed to the key-
board for 2 h or 12 years.
Keywords Automaticity .Cognitive control .Automaticity .
Implicit/explicit memory
People have poor explicit knowledge of many familiar objects
(James, 1890). For example, people are frequently unable to
recall the details of coins (Nickerson & Adams, 1979)orthe
layout of elevator buttons (Vendetti, Castel, & Holyoak, 2013)
and the locations of fire extinguishers (Castel, Vendetti, &
Holyoak, 2013) in the buildings where they work everyday.
Their obliviousness to these objects is interesting, but it may
not be surprising: People do not need to know which direction
the president’s head is facing on a coin to spend it, they have
ample time to select the appropriate elevator button, and they
may never need to use a fire extinguisher. However, some
objects, such as the QWERTY keyboard, are used daily and
manipulated rapidly. Most college students are skilled typists,
who are able to execute five to six keystrokes a second with a
high degree of accuracy (Logan & Crump, 2011). To enable
such performance, it seems crucial for typists to know where
the keys are located. Yet, previous work has suggested that
even complex skills like typewriting are often accomplished
without attending to the details of the actions that are being
performed (Logan & Crump, 2009)orthedetailsofthe
objects that are acted on (Liu, Crump, & Logan, 2010).
Psychologists suggest that skilled performance does not
depend on awareness of the details, because skilled tasks are
represented in a qualitatively different manner than novel tasks
(Anderson, 1982; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Fitts & Posner, 1967;
Logan, 1988). Novel tasks require the effortful process of
loading explicit knowledge about the task into working mem-
ory and manipulating it to support performance. Skilled tasks
bypass working memory by relying on automatic procedures
that process implicit knowledge. However, this raises questions
about the kind of knowledge that underlies expert performance:
If experts do not use explicit knowledge to perform skilled
tasks, do they lose it? On the one hand, they might. From
Ebbinghaus (1964/1895) onward, abundant evidence has indi-
cated that explicit knowledge is forgotten if it is not rehearsed
(Underwood, 1957; Wixted, 2004). On the other hand, perhaps
they do not lose it, since there is some evidence that memories
of well-learned skills are never lost (Bahrick, 1984;Kolers,
1976). Thus, the question is empirical, and the goal of this
article was to answer it in the domain of skilled typing.
The present study investigated the explicit knowledge
skilled typists have of the locations of keys on the QWERTY
K. M. Snyder (*):J. E. Ulrich :G. D. Logan
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA
e-mail: kristy.m.snyder@vanderbilt.edu
G. D. Logan
e-mail: gordon.logan@vanderbilt.edu
Y. As h i t a k a :H. Shimada
Kobe University, Hyogo, Japan
K. M. Snyder :G. D. Logan
Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University,
Nashville, TN 37240, USA
Atten Percept Psychophys
DOI 10.3758/s13414-013-0548-4
Author's personal copy
keyboard. Since the proliferation of personal computers in the
1980s, the QWERTY keyboard has become ubiquitous in
western culture. In the United States, middle-school students
typically receive formal training on the QWERTY keyboard
and type voraciously throughout their teenage years. College
students typically have 10 years of typing experience and type
70 words per minute (WPM; Logan & Crump, 2011). In
acquiring this skill, typists must have encoded many memory
traces of the QWERTY keyboard from thousands of hours of
practice (Ericsson & Charness, 1994;Logan,1988). Therefore,
it is possible that skilled typists acquired explicit knowledge of
the keyboard, which they may retain when they attain high
levels of skill. However, hierarchical theories of skilled perfor-
mance suggest that our knowledge of the details of skilled
actions and the objects that we manipulate skillfully is implicit
(Liu et al., 2010;Logan&Crump,2009; Vallacher & Wegner,
1987); it is delegated to lower levels of a control hierarchy that
are proceduralized and informationally encapsulated (Logan &
Crump, 2011; Shaffer, 1976; Sternberg, Knoll, & Turock,
1990). Extensive practice may strengthen this implicit knowl-
edge without strengthening explicit knowledge. Novice typists
may rely on explicit perception rather than memory. They may
look at the keyboard to guide their fingers to the appropriate
keys and stop looking at the keyboard when the knowledge
becomes implicit (Tapp & Logan, 2011).
Previous work has demonstrated that skilled typists have
poor explicit knowledge of the relative locations of keys on
the QWERTY keyboard in tasks that require them to say
where one key is located with respect to another (Liu et al.,
2010). In the present work, we investigated the extent of
skilled typists’explicit knowledge of absolute key locations
regardless of the locations of other keys. We assessed their
knowledge of absolute key locations in three ways: with a free
recall task (Exp.1), a cued recall task (Exp.2), and a recogni-
tion memory task (Exp.3). The results indicated that skilled
typists have inaccurate and incomplete explicit knowledge of
QWERTY key locations. Thus, typists may have forgotten or
lost access to the explicit information. Alternatively, they may
never have established explicit knowledge of the key loca-
tions. We conducted a fourth experiment to determine which
explanation is more likely. The Dvorak keyboard (Dvorak,
Merrick, Dealey, & Ford, 1936) is an alternative to the
QWERTY keyboard that offers a different arrangement of
keys. We introduced skilled QWERTY typists to the Dvorak
keyboard by having them complete a 2-h Dvorak touch-typing
tutorial. We then assessed the extent of their explicit knowl-
edge of absolute Dvorak key locations with a free recall task.
Experiment 1
Experiment 1 tested free recall of QWERTY key locations.
Typists were given a printout of a blank QWERTY keyboard
(see Fig. 1a) and asked to write letters in their correct locations.
If they had explicit knowledge of key locations, they should be
able to write every letter in its correct location. If they did not
have explicit knowledge of key locations, forgot the informa-
tion, or lost access to it, they should misplace and omit letters.
Method
Subjects Most modern college students are skilled typists
(Logan & Crump, 2011), so we were able to recruit typists
from the Vanderbilt University subject pool, which consists
primarily of Vanderbilt students, but also includes some people
from the surrounding community. We used the standard Web-
based recruitment system and asked for volunteers who had
formal training in touch-typing and the self-reported ability to
type 40 WPM. The 100 typists that we recruited were 20.8 years
old, on average, (range 18–28 years). They had an average of
11.4 years of typing experience and averaged 72.2 WPM on a
typing test (Logan & Zbrodoff, 1998;range16.4–109.8 WPM;
mean accuracy= 93.6 %, range 78–100 %). They received
course credit or $6 for 30 min of participation.
Apparatus, stimuli, and procedure Typists first completed a
typing history survey. Then they were given a blank
QWERTY keyboard printed on a 14 × 21.6 cm sheet of paper
(Fig. 1a), with the printed side down. When instructed, typists
turned the sheet over and filled in the keyboard by writing
letters in their appropriate locations. They were given 80 s to
complete the task, divided into four 20-s time periods. Free
recall studies have suggested that 80 s is enough time to recall
26 items if they were explicitly available (Kahana & Howard,
2005;Murdock,1962). To determine when letters were
recalled, we had typists write their responses in a different
ink color during each 20-s time period. Typists were not given
feedback concerning their accuracy at any time. Once the
keyboard task concluded, typists completed a typing test (for
details, see Logan & Zbrodoff, 1998).
Results and discussion
The probabilities that letters were correctly located, were
omitted, or were mislocated are presented on a representation
of the keyboard in Fig. 1b. Overall, typists correctly located
14.9 letters (57.3 %). The remaining letters were either
mislocated (22.8 %) or omitted (19.6 %). The mean numbers
of letters correctly located and mislocated in each of the four
time blocks are presented in Fig. 2. The data suggest that
typists ran out of explicit knowledge instead of time: From
the first to the fourth 20-s recall period, they correctly located 7.9,
3.5, 2.3, and 1.4 letters. The data also suggest that some of their
explicit knowledge was inaccurate, not unavailable: Over the
same recall periods, they mislocated 1.3, 1.7, 1.4, and 1.3 letters.
Accuracy on the free recall task (M= 57.3 %) was significantly
Atten Percept Psychophys
Author's personal copy
lower than accuracy on the typing test (M= 93.6 %), t(99) =
15.2, p< .001, which involved a mixture of implicit and explicit
knowledge. These results suggest that skilled typists have insuf-
ficient explicit knowledge of key locations to support perfor-
mance on the typing test. Their incomplete explicit knowledge
must have been supplemented by excellent implicit knowledge.
Typ ists’performance on the typing test was not related to
their performance on the free recall task. Typing speed was not
correlated significantly with correct placements, r(98) = .16,
p=.11,omissions,r(98) = –.07, p= .49, or mislocations,
r(98) = –.11, p= .28. Typing accuracy was not correlated
significantly with correct placements, r(98) = .06, p=.55,
omissions, r(98) = –.08, p= .43, or mislocations, r(98) = –.01,
p= .94. These findings suggest that fluent typing does not
require explicit knowledge of key locations.
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 probed skilled typists’explicit knowledge of
QWERTY key locations with a cued-recall procedure. We
displayed an image of a blank QWERTY keyboard on a
computer screen and randomly cued each of the letter keys
ten times. Typists were asked to name the letter that
corresponded to the cued key. If they have explicit knowledge
of key locations, they should be able to identify all of the
letters on the keyboard.
Two groups of typists completed the cued recall task. One
group completed the task without explicit instruction regarding
what they should do with their hands. In debriefing, some of
these typists reported that they simulated typing the first time a
key’s location was cued to help jog their memories. To prevent
use of this strategy, we asked a second group of typists to
complete the cued recall task while pressing a sequence of keys
to suppress motor activity. We called the first group the “no-
suppression”group and the second group the “motor suppres-
sion”group. Although the no-suppression and motor suppres-
sion groups took part in the study sequentially, we considered
assignment to groups to be random in our data analyses because
the two groups were sampled from the same population.
Method
Subjects Two groups of 16 subjects were recruited from the
same population as in Experiment1. For the no-suppression
group, the mean age was 23.9 years (range= 20–33 years),
mean typing speed was 73.9 WPM (range 50.1–93.8 WPM),
Fig.1 a Schematic of the blank QWERTY keyboard. bNumbers of subjects out of 100 who correctly located (top number), omitted (middle number),
and misplaced (bottom number) each letter in Experiment 1
Fig. 2 Numbers of letters correctly placed (solid lines)andmisplaced
(dashed lines) during each 20-s time period in Experiment 1(1= 0–20 s;
2= 20–40 s; 3= 40–60 s; 4= 60–80 s)
Atten Percept Psychophys
Author's personal copy
and mean accuracy was 93.6 % (range 87.5–98.1 %). For the
motor suppression group, the mean age was 22.2 years (range
18–34 years), mean typing speed was 76.1 WPM (range 37.0–
115.6 WPM), and mean accuracy was 93.5 % (range 84.9–
98.1 %). All subjects reported having formal touch-typing
training. The no-suppression group averaged 13.3 years of
typing experience; the motor suppression group averaged
12.3 years of typing experience.
Apparatus, stimuli, and procedure The cued recall procedure
was the same for both groups. The experiment was conducted
on a MacBook Pro laptop computer with a 15-in. color display
that had its keyboard covered. A program, written in
METACARD, displayed a 25.4 × 16.5 cm gray window in
the center of the laptop’s screen. A 25.4 × 10.2 cm image of a
blank QWERTY keyboard (Fig. 1a) was displayed 2.5 cm
from the top of the gray window. Keys were cued by a 1.3 ×
1.3 cm yellow square that outlined the key’slocation.Each
letter key was randomly cued ten times, resulting in 260 trials.
Typistsweretoldtosaytheletterthatcorrespondedtothe
cued key as quickly and accurately as possible, and to guess if
they were unsure. Typists pressed the spacebar of a Korean
keyboard connected to the laptop to initiate the next trial.
Typists did not receive feedback concerning the accuracy of
their performance. Once the experiment concluded, typists
completed the typing test (Logan & Zbrodoff, 1998).
For the no-suppression group, vocal responses were
recorded by the laptop’s internal microphone. For the motor
suppression group, vocal responses were recorded through a
microphone that was attached to a set of headphones. A tone
was played every 500 ms through the headphones. Typists
were required to press the right arrow key on the Korean
keyboard with their right index finger and the left arrow key
with their left index finger in a right, right, left, left sequence in
time with the tone.
Results and discussion
No suppression The probabilities of recalling the letter correct-
ly in response to the cue are presented in Fig. 3as a function of
presentation number. Typists correctly identified the cued letter
78.8 % of the time on average. The correlation between overall
recall accuracy and typing test accuracy (M= 93.6 %) was not
significant, r(14) = .45, p= .08. Typing test accuracy was
significantly higher than overall recall accuracy, t(15) = 4.7,
p< .001, and than recall accuracy on the tenth presentation
(M= 82.7 %), t(15) = 3.5, p< .01. These findings suggest that
typists’explicit knowledge was not sufficient to support per-
formance on the typing test. They must have supplemented
their explicit knowledge with implicit knowledge. Typing test
speed correlated significantly with overall recall accuracy,
r(14) = .51, p= .05, but not with first-presentation accuracy
(M=67.3%),r(14) = .31, p=.24.
Recall accuracy increased significantly from the first to the
tenth presentations, F(9, 225) = 18.3, MSE=38.5,p<.001.
This suggests that typists either learned the key locations or
learned to access their knowledge as they completed the task,
despite receiving no feedback. Some typists reported that they
simulated typing words the first time that a location was cued
in order to refresh their memories of the key locations. Their
reaction times (RTs) are consistent with this strategy (see
Fig. 4). Correct RTs were longest for the first presentations
and decreased over the course of the experiment, F(9, 225) =
14.1, MSE = 3,043,195.7, p<.001.
Motor suppression The probabilities of recalling the cued
letter correctly are presented in Fig. 3as a function of the
number of cue presentations. Typists correctly identified the
cued letter 66.8 % of the time on average. We observed a
significant correlation between overall recall accuracy and
typing test accuracy (M=93.5%),r(14) = .50, p=.05.
Typing test accuracy was significantly higher than overall
recall accuracy, t(15) = 5.7, p< .001, and than accuracy on
the tenth presentation (M=68.5%),t(15) = 4.8, p<.001.
Fig.3 Probabilities of recalling the correct letter on each of the ten times
that a key’s location was cued, for both the no-suppression (solid line)
and motor suppression (dashed line) groups in Experiment 2
Fig.4 Reaction times for correct responses on each of the ten times that a
key’s location was cued for the no-suppression (solid line) and motor
suppression (dashed line) groups in Experiment 2
Atten Percept Psychophys
Author's personal copy
These findings suggest that typists’explicit knowledge was
not sufficient to support their performance on the typing test,
so they must have supplemented explicit knowledge with
implicit knowledge of key location.
Some evidence emerged of a relationship between typing
skill and recall accuracy. Typing test speed correlated signifi-
cantly with overall recall accuracy, r(14) = .66, p< .01, and with
accuracy on the first presentation (M=57.2%),r(14) = .68,
p< 01. Recall accuracy improved significantly from the first to
the tenth presentations, F(9, 225) = 7.3, MSE =76.5,p< .001.
RTs for correct responses are presented as a function of the
number of cue presentations in Fig. 4. RTs were longest for
the first presentation and decreased over the course of the
experiment, F(9, 225) = 14.8, MSE = 579,123.2, p< .001.
Effects of motor suppression To assess the effects of motor
suppression, we conducted 2 (group: no suppression vs. motor
suppression) × 10 (cue presentation) analyses of variance
(ANOVAs) on cued recall accuracy and RT. Accuracy was
higher in the no-suppression group than in the motor suppres-
sion group, F(1, 50) = 6.8, MSE = 2,709.8, p<.05,
suggesting that having the opportunity to simulate typing
helped typists in the no-suppression group to retrieve key
locations. This finding is consistent with Logan and
Crump’s(2011) two-loop theory of skilled typing. Key loca-
tion information is encapsulated in the inner loop, so the outer
loop must monitor the inner loop’s output (i.e., hand and
finger movements) to discover the location of the keys (Tapp
& Logan, 2011). Overall, RTs did not differ significantly
between the groups: Neither the main effect of group,
F(1, 50) = 0.1, MSE = 70,577.5, p= .73, nor the interaction
between group and presentation, F(9, 450) = 4.0, MSE =
181,159.44, p= .07, was significant. However, RTs on the
first presentation were significantly longer in the no-
suppression group (M= 5,895 ms) than in the suppression
group (M= 3,900 ms), t(50) = 5.3, MSE = 7,057,748.2,
p< .001. This finding is consistent with reports from typists
in the no-suppression group of simulating typing the first time
a key was cued to jog their memories.
Recall errors were categorized into adjacent and non-
adjacent errors. Adjacent errors were errors in which typists
identified a letter whose location was next to the cued key; all
other errors were non-adjacent errors. If the typists guessed
letters randomly, the expected percentage of adjacent errors
would be 16 %. However, the observed percentage of adjacent
errors was 59.1 %. This finding suggests that typists had some
knowledge of key locations, although it was not very precise
(see also Liu et al., 2010). Typists in the no-suppression group
made adjacent errors more often (M= 69.9 %) than did typists
in the suppression group (M=48.3%),t(23) = 4.6, MSE =
3.9, p< .001. This suggests that typists’knowledge of key
locations is more precise when they have the option to simu-
late typing.
Experiment 3
The third experiment probed typists’explicit knowledge with
a recognition procedure. We displayed an image of a blank
QWERTY keyboard and presented a letter in one of the key
locations on each trial. Each letter was presented 16 times.
Half of the time, the letter was displayed in its correct location
(valid condition) and half the time, the letter was displayed in
an incorrect location (invalid condition). On half of the invalid
presentations (four trials), the letter was displayed adjacent to
its correct location (near condition), and on the other half of
the invalid presentations (four trials), the letter was displayed
in a location that was not adjacent to its correct position (far
condition). Typists were told to indicate whether or not the
letter was presented in its correct location. The contrast be-
tween the near and far condition provides some information
about the precision of typists’knowledge of letter locations.
The more precise their knowledge, the less likely they should
be to falsely recognize letter locations in the far condition.
Method
Subjects A new set of 16 typists was recruited from the same
population as before. Their mean age was 24.2 years (range
18–40), mean typing speed was 77.3 WPM (range 37.0–106.7
WPM), and mean accuracy was 95.3 % (range 89.6–100 %).
All typists reported having formal touch-typing training. They
had an average of 12.7 years of typing experience.
Apparatus, stimuli, and procedure The computer and displays
were the same as Experiment2, except that an uppercase 44-pt
Helvetica letter appeared inside one of the key positions on
each trial. Each of the 26 letters was displayed in its correct
QWERTY keyboard location eight times, in an adjacent key’s
location four times, and in a nonadjacent key’slocationfour
times. In all, 416 trials were presented. The presentation order
was randomized for each subject. Typists were asked to indi-
cate whether or not the letter was displayed in its correct
location as quickly and as accurately as possible by pressing
the left or right arrow key on a Korean keyboard connected to
the laptop. A sticker with an uppercase “Y”was placed on the
left arrow key, and a sticker with an uppercase “N”was placed
on the right arrow key. The letter remained on the screen until
typists responded. Then the program initiated the next trial.
No feedback about the typists’accuracy was provided. Once
the experiment concluded, typists completed the typing test
(Logan & Zbrodoff, 1998).
Results and discussion
Recognition performance was measured by calculating hit rates
and false alarm rates. The hit rate was the percentage of valid
trials on which typists indicated that the presented letter was
Atten Percept Psychophys
Author's personal copy
displayed in its correct location. Figure 5displays the hit rates
for each of the eight times a letter was displayed in its valid
location, as well as the false alarm rates for each of the four
times a letter was displayed in a near invalid location and each
of the four times a letter was displayed in a far invalid location.
The overall hit rate (M=85.0%),t(15) = 2.5, p<.05,was
significantly lower than the typing test accuracy (M=95.3%),
but the hit rate on the eighth presentation (M=86.5%)wasnot
significantly different from the typing test accuracy, t(15) = 1.6,
p= .13. The correlation between the overall hit rate and typing
test accuracy was not significant, r(14) = .10, p= .72. Typing
test speed correlated significantly with both the overall hit rate,
r(14) = .65, p< .01, and the first-presentation hit rate
(M=82.5%),r(14) = .64, p< .01. These findings suggest
that typists with higher levels of skill performed better on the
recognition task than did typists with lower levels of skill. Hit
rates remained relatively stable from the first to the eighth
presentations, F(7, 175) = 1.8, MSE = 51.2, p=.08.
However, a contrast showed that hit rates were significantly
higher on the eighth presentation (M= 86.5) than on the first
presentation (M= 82.5), F(7, 175) = 2.5, p< .05. Additional
contrasts showed that the only statistically significant increase
in hit rates among successive presentations was between the
fourth (M= 82.5) and fifth (M= 87.5) presentations, F(7, 175)
=3.9,p< .001. RTs for hits decreased significantly from the
first to the eighth presentations (see Fig. 6), F(7, 175) = 17.9,
MSE = 233,984.5, p< .001. A contrast showed that hit RTs
were significantly shorter on the eighth presentation (M=
1,532.0 ms) than on the first presentation (M= 2,779.7 ms),
F(1, 175) = 53.2, p< .001. Additional contrasts revealed that
the only statistically significant decrease in hit RTs among
successive presentations was between the first and second
(M= 2,197.9 ms) presentations, F(1, 175) = 11.6, p< .001.
The false alarm rates were the percentages of near and far
trials on which typists indicated that the presented letter was
displayed in its correct location. The overall false alarm rate
was 13.6 % for the near condition and 4.0 % for the far
condition. A 2 (near vs. far) × 4 (presentations) ANOVA
showed that the false alarm rate was higher in the near than
in the far condition, F(1, 25) = 57.8, MSE =82.2,p<.001.In
the near condition, false alarm rates decreased significantly
from the first to the fourth presentations, F(3, 75) = 5.1, MSE
=55.8,p< .01. A contrast showed that false alarm rates in the
near condition were significantly lower in the fourth presen-
tation (M= 10.8 %) than in the first (M=18.3%),F(1, 75) =
8.1, p< .01. Additional contrasts showed no statistically
significant decreases in false alarm rates among successive
presentations.
In the far condition, false alarm rates also decreased signif-
icantly from the first to the fourth presentations, F(3, 75) =
6.1, MSE =23.1,p< .001. A contrast showed that false alarm
rates were significantly lower in the fourth presentation (mean
difference 1.9 %) than in the first (M=7.0),F(1, 75) = 12.5,
p< .001. The only statistically significant decrease in far false
alarm rates among successive presentations occurred between
the first and second (mean difference = 2.4 %) presentations,
F(1, 75) = 7.3, p< .01. These findings suggest that typists
have some approximate knowledge of key locations, and that
the precision of their knowledge increases with exposure to
the task.
Experiment 4
The previous experiments demonstrated that skilled typists
have incomplete and imprecise explicit knowledge of
QWERTY key locations. These findings are consistent with
Fig.5 In Experiment 3, each letter was presented 16 times: eight valid
presentations (solid line) and eight invalid presentations (dashed lines).
Of the eight invalid presentations, four occurred in adjacent, or near,
locations, and four occurred in nonadjacent, or far, locations. The 16
presentations of each letter were randomly ordered for each subject, such
that the eight valid, four near invalid, and four far invalid trials were
equally distributed throughout the experiment. Hit rates (square markers),
averaged across letters, are displayed for each of the eight times that a
letter was presented in its valid location. False alarm rates, also averaged
across letters, are displayed for each of the four times that a letter was
presented in a near invalid location (circle markers) and the four times that
a letter was presented in a far invalid location (triangle markers)
Fig.6 Reaction times, averaged across letters, for hits (square markers),
near false alarms (circle markers), and far false alarms (triangle markers)
are displayed for each of the eight times a letter was presented in its valid
location, each of the four times a letter was presented in a near invalid
location, and each of the four times a letter was presented in a far invalid
location in Experiment 3
Atten Percept Psychophys
Author's personal copy
theories of skill acquisition (Anderson, 1982;Anderson,
Fincham, & Douglass, 1997; Fitts & Posner, 1967) and auto-
maticity (Logan, 1988). Skill acquisition theories suggest that
novice performance relies on algorithms, or task-specific
rules. Novices consult the algorithms to complete novel tasks,
so the information required for the algorithms must be explic-
itly accessible in perception or memory. Skilled performance
relies on proceduralized knowledge (Anderson, 1982;
Anderson et al., 1997; Fitts & Posner, 1967). Experts retrieve
solutions from memory (Logan, 1988), so they have no need
to consult the explicit knowledge that supports algorithmic
performance. Thus, it is possible that skilled typists forget or
lose access to the explicit knowledge they utilized as novices.
It is also possible that skilled typists never learned much
explicit knowledge in the first place. The explicit knowledge
they rely on in the algorithmic stage may be perceptual.
Nothing prevents typists from looking at the keyboard when
they type, so they may look at the keyboard to find the keys.
The purpose of Experiment4was to determine whether
novice typists memorize explicit knowledge of key locations
when they learn to touch-type. Typing skill is ubiquitous, so
finding adults who are novice typists would be difficult (Logan
&Crump,2011), and children who are just acquiring typing
skill would differ from our adult experts in many ways. Instead,
we turned skilled QWERTY typists into novices by having
them type on the Dvorak keyboard (Dvorak et al., 1936), on
which keys occur in unfamiliar locations (see Fig. 7a). We
asked typists to complete a Dvoraktouch-typingtrainingtuto-
rial that took about 1.5 h and an additional practice session that
lasted about 30 min. We then investigated their explicit knowl-
edge of Dvorak key locations with a free recall task. Typists
were given a printout of a blank Dvorak keyboard (see Fig. 7b)
and asked to write letters in their correct locations. If typists had
established explicit knowledge of the keys’locations, they
should be able to fill in the blank keyboard. Afterward, we
gave them a free recall task with the QWERTY keyboard to
compare their explicit knowledge of the two keyboards.
Method
Subjects A group of 24 subjects were recruited from the same
population as in the previous experiments. All subjects report-
ed having formal QWERTY touch-typing training and aver-
aged 12.7 years of typing experience on the QWERTY key-
board. The mean QWERTY typing speed was 74.5 WPM
(range 40.7–107.9 WPM) and accuracy was 93.6 % (range
86.0–99.1 %). Their mean age was 22.4 years (range 18–
35 years). All subjects received $36 for 3 h of participation.
Apparatus, stimuli, and procedure The study consisted of two
sessions.Session1lasted2handconsistedofthreetasks:
typing history survey, QWERTY typing test, and Dvorak
touch-typing tutorial. In the previous experiments, the typing
test program had randomly selected one of four possible para-
graphs for the typists to transcribe (Logan & Zbrodoff, 1998).
In Experiment4, all typists typed all four paragraphs. The order
was counterbalanced using a Latin square. One of the para-
graphs was typed on the QWERTY keyboard in Session 1, and
the other three paragraphs were typed on the Dvorak keyboard
in Session 2. After the paragraph(s) were typed, the typing test
program prompted typists to transcribe the sentence “The quick
brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,”which contains all 26
letters of the alphabet. QWERTY typing speeds did not differ
between the paragraph (M= 74.5 WPM) and the sentence (M=
76.2 WPM), t(23) < 1, p= .35. QWERTY typing accuracy also
did not differ between the paragraph (M= 93.6 %) and the
sentence (M=89.3%),t(23) = 1.7, p=.11.
After the QWERTY typing test, typists completed a
Dvorak touch-typing training tutorial that is freely available
on the Internet (www.typingweb.com). The interface of the
tutorial displayed text that learners were instructed to type at
the top of the screen and a schematic of the Dvorak keyboard
and figures of hands at the bottom of the screen. The tutorial
consisted of 103 exercises. In Exercises 1–21, the home row
keys were introduced and practiced. In Exercises 22–31, the
top row keys were introduced and practiced. In Exercise 32,
the bottom row keys were introduced and practiced. In
Exercises 33–103, all keys were practiced. At the beginning
of the tutorial, the text prompts displayed letter strings. As
more keys were introduced, the text prompts displayed words,
and eventually sentences. The average amount of time spent
on any given exercise was 93 s (range 11–280 s). The tutorial
progressed to the next exercise when typists achieved at least
70 % accuracy on the current exercise. The typists completed
an average of 53.9 exercises (range 37–77) and spent an
average of 81.2 min (range 66–93 min) on the Dvorak
tutorial. To ensure that all of the keys had been introduced,
typists were required to complete at least 34 exercises during
Session 1 to be eligible for Session 2.
Session 2 occurred within 2 days of Session 1, lasted 1 h,
and consisted of three tasks: Dvorak typing test, Dvorak free
recall task, and QWERTY free recall task. Typists first com-
pleted the Dvorak typing test. The mean Dvorak typing speed
was 15.2 WPM (range 9.5–23.1 WPM) and accuracy was
92.5 % (range 77.2–99.1 %) when typing the paragraphs.
Typing speed did not differ between the paragraphs and the
sentence (M= 15.8 WPM), t(23) = 1.8, p= .09. Typing
accuracy also did not differ between the paragraphs and the
sentence (both Ms = 92.4 %), t(23) < 1, p=.08.
After the Dvorak typing test, typists completed the Dvorak
key location free recall task. Typists were given a blank
Dvorak keyboard printed on a 14 × 21.6 cm sheet of paper
(see Fig. 7b). The rest of the procedures were exactly the same
as in Experiment1. After the Dvorak free recall task, typists
completed a QWERTY free recall task. The materials and
procedures were the same as in Experiment1.
Atten Percept Psychophys
Author's personal copy
Results and discussion
Dvorak analyses Overall, typists correctly located 16.5 letters
(63.5%),mislocated6.0letters(23%),andomitted4.5letters
(17.3 %). The mean numbers of letters correctly located and
mislocated in the four time blocks are presented in Fig. 8.From
the first to the fourth 20-s recall period, typists correctly located
9.5, 3.7, 2.1, and 1.3 letters. Over the same recall periods,
typists mislocated 1.5, 1.2, 1.4, and 1.4 letters. Accuracy on
thefreerecalltask(M= 63.6 %) was significantly lower than
accuracy on the typing test (M=92.4%),t(23) = 5.2, p< .001.
Typing speed was negatively correlated with correct place-
ments, r(22) = –.47, p<.05,positivelycorrelatedwithmis-
locations, r(22) = .41, p< .05, and unrelated to omissions,
r(22) = .22, p= .31. These results suggest that typists who
completed the typing test quickly performed worse on the free
recall task, whereas typists who completed the typing test
slowly performed better at recall. Typing test accuracy was
negatively correlated with correct placements, r(22) = –.55,
p< .01, was unrelated to mislocations, r(22) = .26, p=.23,
and was positively correlated with omissions, r(22) = .41,
p< .05. These results indicate that typists’implicit knowledge
of key locations did not predict their explicit knowledge of
key locations.
QWERTY analyses Typists correctly located 14.1 letters
(54.2 %), mislocated 5.9 letters (22.7 %), and omitted seven
letters (26.9 %). The mean numbers of letters correctly located
and mislocated in each of the four time blocks are presented in
Fig. 8. From the first to the fourth 20-s recall periods, typists
correctly located 7.3, 2.3, 2.6, and 1.9 letters, and mislocated
1.3, 2.1, 1.3, and 1.2 letters. Accuracy on the free recall task
(M= 54.2 %) was significantly lower than accuracy on the
typing test (M=93.6%),t(23) = 7.6, p< .001. Typing speed
did not correlate significantly with correct placements,
r(22) = .39, p= .06, or with mislocations, r(22) = .06, p= .80.
However, a significant negative correlation was observed be-
tween typing speed and omissions, r(22) = –.41, p<.05.
Typing accuracy did not correlate significantly with correct
placements, r(22) = –.13, p= .55, mislocations, r(22) = –.20,
p= .34, or omissions, r(22) = –.03, p= .90. Overall, the results
of the QWERTY free recall task in Experiment4replicated the
results of Experiment1. The only exception was the significant
Fig.7 a Schematic of a Dvorak keyboard. bSchematic of the blank Dvorak keyboard used in the Dvorak free recall task in Experiment 4
Fig.8 Numbers of letters correctly placed (solid lines) and misplaced
(dashed lines) during each 20-s time period for the Dvorak (gray lines )and
QWERTY (black lines) keyboards in Experiment 4(1 = 0–20 s; 2= 20–40 s;
3= 40–60 s; 4= 60–80 s)
Atten Percept Psychophys
Author's personal copy
relationship between faster typing speed and increased letter
omissions.
Dvorak versus QWERTY Free recall performance was very
similar for the two keyboards. We found no significant differ-
ence in the numbers of letters correctly located (M= 16.5 for
Dvorak, M= 14.1 for QWERTY), t(23) = 1.9, p= .07, or the
numbers of letters mislocated (M= 6.0 for Dvorak, M=5.9for
QWERTY), t(23) < 1, p= .96, but the number of omitted letters
was lower for Dvorak (M=4.5)thanforQWERTY(M=7.0),
t(23) = 2.4, p< .05. These findings suggest that typists have
similar explicit knowledge of key locations, whether they spend
2 h or 12–13 years interacting with a keyboard. Thus, it appears
that typists do not forget or lose access to explicit knowledge of
key locations. Instead, they may never have learned it.
General discussion
In four experiments, we investigated skilled typists’explicit
knowledge of the absolute locations of keys on the QWERTY
keyboard. Our findings showed that, despite being able to
execute six to seven keystrokes per second with near perfect
accuracy, skilled typists were able to report the locations of only
about half of the keys. They located 57 % (Exp.1)and54%
(Exp.4) of the letters correctly in free recall, 63 % of the letters
correctly in cued recall (Exp. 2), and 85 % of the letters correctly
in a recognition test (Exp.3). The results are consistent with
previous research that has shown that skilled typists have poor
explicit knowledge of which hand types each letter (Logan &
Crump, 2009; Snyder & Logan, 2013; Tapp & Logan, 2011)or
where the keys are relative to each other (Liu et al., 2010). More
broadly, the results are consistent with previous research that
has shown that people have little explicit knowledge of familiar
objects (Castel et al., 2013;James,1890; Nickerson & Adams,
1979;Vendettietal.,2013). Apparently, familiarity and exten-
sive practice does not guarantee awareness of details. This is
more surprising for the keyboard than for objects like coins
(Nickerson & Adams, 1979):Typistsneedtoknowwherethe
keys are in order to type, but people do not need to know the
details of coins in order to spend them. Knowing that a penny is
brown is enough.
In each experiment, accuracy on the tests of explicit knowl-
edge was lower than accuracy on the typing test, suggesting that
explicit knowledge is not sufficient to support skilled typewrit-
ing. The typing test could involve only implicit knowledge, or it
could involve a mixture of implicit and explicit knowledge. The
explicit knowledge could come from immediate perception of
the keyboard or from explicit memory. We suspect that explicit
knowledge, if it was used at all, came from perception of the
keyboard. Retrieval from explicit memory would be too slow:
In Experiment2, cued recall RTs averaged 2,071 and 2,612 ms
for the no-suppression and motor suppression groups,
respectively. By contrast, Crump and Logan (2010) found that
the RT to type a single keystroke in response to a single letter on
the screen ranged from 650 to 700 ms in skilled typists drawn
from the same population. Moreover, skilled typists appear to
rely on perception of the keyboard to support their performance,
in that they type more slowly when their view of the keyboard
is blocked (Long, 1976; Rabbitt, 1978; Tapp & Logan, 2011).
Our results are consistent with theories of automaticity that
propose that skilled performance relies on implicit knowledge,
whereas novice performance relies on explicit knowledge
(Anderson, 1982; Beilock & Carr, 2001; Beilock, Wierenga,
&Carr,2002; Fitts & Posner, 1967;Logan,1988), and with
hierarchical theories of skilled performance that suggest that
higher levels use explicit knowledge, whereas lower levels use
implicit knowledge (Logan & Crump, 2011;Shaffer,1976;
Sternberg et al., 1990). Theories of automaticity and hierarchi-
cal control do not specify the nature of the explicit knowledge
in general; it can vary with the nature of the skill and with the
specific models of novice performance. At present, no theories
have addressed novice typing. Our results should inform the
development of such theories: Experiments 1,2,3suggest that
explicit knowledge is forgotten or is inaccessible if it has been
learned. Experiment4suggests that typists may never have
learneditinthefirstplace.
Our results show that daily exposure to an object is not
sufficient to produce complete explicit knowledge of the object
in memory. Despite the consistency of these findings with
previous research and theory, we find it surprising that skilled
typists know so little about the keyboard. Typing is a complex
task, and directing the fingers to the correct location in the
correct order requires an extensive amount of control. Even
so, it appears that we are as oblivious to the keyboard as we are
to the coins that we spend and the elevator buttons that we push
every day.
Author note This research was supported by Grant Nos. BCS 0957074
and BCS 1257272 from the National Science Foundation.
References
Anderson, J. R. (1982). Acquisition of cognitive skill. Psychological
Review, 89, 369–406. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.89.4.369
Anderson, J. R., Fincham, J. M., & Douglass, S. (1997). The role of
examples and rules in the acquisition of a cognitive skill. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23,
932–945. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.23.4.932
Bahrick, H. P. (1984). Semantic memory content in permastore:
Fifty years of memory for Spanish learned in school. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 113, 1–29. doi:10.1037/0096-
3445.113.1.1
Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). On the fragility of skilled perfor-
mance: What governs choking under pressure? Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 130, 701–725. doi:10.1037/
0096-3445.130.4.701
Atten Percept Psychophys
Author's personal copy
Beilock, S. L., Wierenga, S. A., & Carr, T. H. (2002). Expertise, attention,
and memory in sensorimotor skill execution: Impact of novel task
constraints on dual-task performance and episodic memory.
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 55A, 1211–1240.
doi:10.1080/02724980244000170
Castel, A. D., Vendetti, M., & Holyoak, K. J. (2013). Fire drill:
Inattentional blindness and amnesia for the location of fire extin-
guishers. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 74, 1391–1396.
doi:10.3758/s13414-012-0355-3
Crump, M. J. C., & Logan, G. D. (2010). Hierarchical control over skilled
typing: Evidence for word-level control over the execution of indi-
vidual keystrokes. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,
Memory, and Cognition, 36, 1369–1380. doi:10.1037/a0020696
Dvorak, A., Merrick, N. L., Dealey, W. L., & Ford, G. C. (1936).
Typewriting behavior. New York: American Book Co.
Ebbinghaus, H. (1964). Memory: A contribution to experimental psychol-
ogy (H.A. Ruger & C.E. Bussenius, Trans.). New York: Dover.
Original work published 1895.
Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1994). Expert performance: Its structure
and acquisition. American Psychologist, 49, 725–747. doi:10.1037/
0003-066X.49.8.725
Fitts, P. M., & Posner, M. I. (1967). Human performance. Monterey:
Brooks/Cole.
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: Henry Holt.
Kahana, M. J., & Howard, M. W. (2005). Spacing and lag effects in free
recall of pure lists. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 159–164.
doi:10.3758/BF03196362
Kolers, P. A. (1976). Reading a year later. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 2, 554–565. doi:10.
1037/0278-7393.2.5.554
Liu, X., Crump, M. J. C., & Logan, G. D. (2010). Do you know where
your fingers have been? Explicit knowledge of the spatial layout of
the keyboard in skilled typists. Memory & Cognition, 38, 474–484.
doi:10.3758/MC.38.4.474
Logan, G. D. (1988). Toward an instance theory of automatization.
Psychological Review, 95, 492–527. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.95.4.
492
Logan, G. D., & Crump, M. J. C. (2009). The left hand doesn’tknow
what the right hand is doing:The disruptive effects of attention to the
hands in skilled typewriting. Psychological Science, 20, 1296–
1300. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02442.x
Logan, G. D.,& Crump, M. J. C. (2011). Hierarchical control ofcognitive
processes: The case for skilled typewriting. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), The
psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and
theory (Vol. 54, pp. 1–27). Burlington: Academic Press.
Logan, G. D., & Zbrodoff, N. J. (1998). Stroop type interference:
Congruity effects in color naming with typewritten responses.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and
Performance, 24, 978–992. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.24.3.978
Long, J. (1976). Visual feedback and skilled keying: Differential effects of
masking the printed copy and the keyboard. Ergonomics, 19, 93–110.
Murdock, B. B., Jr. (1962). The serial position effect of free recall. Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 64, 482–488. doi:10.1037/h0045106
Nickerson, R. S., & Adams, M. J. (1979). Long-term memory for a
common object. Cognitive Psychology, 11, 287–307. doi:10.1016/
0010-0285(79)90013-6
Rabbitt, P. (1978). Detection of errors by skilled typists. Ergonomics, 21,
945–958. doi:10.1080/00140137808931800
Shaffer, L. H. (1976). Intention and performance. Psychological Review,
83, 375–393. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.83.5.375
Snyder, K.M., & Logan, G.D. (2013). Monitoring-induced disruption in
skilled typewriting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human
Perception and Performance.doi:10.1037/a0031007
Sternberg, S., Knoll, R. L., & Turock, D. L. (1990). Hierarchical control
in the execution of action sequences: Tests of two invariance prin-
ciples. In M. Jeannerod (Ed.), Attention and performance XIII:
Motor representation and control (pp. 3–55). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.
Tapp, K. M., & Logan, G. D. (2011). Attention to the hands disrupts
skilled typewriting: The role of vision in producing the disruption.
Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73, 2379–2383. doi:10.
3758/s13414-011-0208-5
Underwood, B. J. (1957). Interference and forgetting. Psychological
Review, 64, 49–60. doi:10.1037/h0044616
Vallacher, R. R., & Wegner, D. M. (1987). What do people think they’re
doing? Action identification and human behavior. Psychological
Review, 94, 3–15. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.94.1.3
Vendetti, M., Castel, A. D., & Holyoak, K. J. (2013). The floor effect:
Impoverished spatial memory for elevator buttons. Attention, Perception,
& Psychophysics, 75, 636–643. doi:10.3758/s13414-013-0448-7
Wixted, J. T. (2004). The psychology and neuroscience of forgetting.
Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 235–269. doi:10.1146/annurev.
psych.55.090902.141555
Atten Percept Psychophys
Author's personal copy
