Using words instead of jumbled characters as stimuli in keyboard training facilitates fluent performance

Keyboarding skill is an important target for adult education programs due to the ubiquity of computers in modern work environments. A previous study showed that novice typists learned key locations quickly but that fluency took a relatively long time to develop. In the present study, novice typists achieved fluent performance in nearly half the time when words rather than jumbled characters were used as stimuli. This suggests that using real words in the keyboarding program can enhance the efficiency of training.     

Effects of age and skill in typing

What are the factors responsible for skilled typing performance, and do they change with the age of the typist? These questions were addressed in two studies by examining time and accuracy of keystrokes in a variety of typinglike activities among typists ranging in speed from 17 to 104 net words per minute and ranging in age from 19 to 72 years old. Typing skill was related to the temporal consistency of making the same keystroke, the efficiency of overlapping successive keystrokes, the speed of alternate-hand tapping, and the number of characters of to-be-typed text required to maintain a normal rate of typing. Older typists were slower in tapping rate and in choice reaction time but were not slower in speed of typing, apparently because they were more sensitive to characters farther in advance of the currently typed character than young typists.     

Attention to the hands disrupts skilled typewriting: The role of vision in producing the disruption

Drawing typists' attention to their hands by asking them to type only letters assigned to the left or the right hand disrupts their performance, slowing the rate of typing and increasing errors. In this article we test the hypothesis that slowing occurs because typists watch their hands to determine which hand types which letter. Skilled typists were cued to type letters of one hand or of both hands while they could view their hands on the keyboard and while their vision was blocked by a box placed over the keyboard. Typing was slower when letters of one hand were typed than when letters of both hands were typed, and the slowing was greater when the hands were covered than when they were not. This supports the hypothesis that slowing occurs because typists watch their hands. However, typists were able to type letters of one hand when the keyboard was covered, so typists must have monitored kinesthetic information as well.     

When does a deep dyslexic make a semantic error? The roles of age-of-acquisition, concreteness, and frequency

Semantic reading errors are the central and defining feature of deep dyslexia. This study compared the words the deep dyslexic patient LW read correctly with those she omitted and those to which she produced semantic errors in terms of their concreteness, age-of-acquisition, frequency, and length. Semantic errors were made to less concrete, later-acquired, and shorter words than were read correctly; there was no reliable effect of word frequency. More importantly, the actual semantic errors produced were later-acquired than the stimulus words, but they were not more concrete or reliably more frequent. These results implicate age-of-acquisition in the process that produces semantic errors. It is proposed that concreteness determines the specificity of the semantic system to activate a set of candidate responses and that age-of-acquisition biases the ease with which certain words can be selected from this set to be produced as reading responses.     

TEACHING CHILDREN TO SPELL: DECREASING CONSONANT CLUSTER ERRORS BY ELIMINATING SELECTIVE STIMULUS CONTROL

Six elementary-aged children were taught to spell words containing initial consonant clusters (CCs). They were trained to select printed words in response to the corresponding spoken words using computerized matching-to-sample procedures. After each training session, they were tested for spelling with a constructed-response transfer test. Based on previous selective stimulus control research, we hypothesized that only the first letter of an initial CC might control spelling when CC spelling errors are made. Thus, a critical-difference matching-to-sample training condition that required the children to respond to both letters of the CC to be correct was compared to a multiple-difference training condition that required the children to respond to only one letter of the pair. Results showed that children made fewer errors during the multiple-difference training condition than during the critical-difference training condition. On the constructed-response transfer tests, however, more overall errors and CC errors were made in the multiple-difference condition than in the critical-difference condition, and the words trained in the multiple-difference condition required more training sessions to reach criterion. All children improved their spelling of novel CC words by the completion of training. If normal classroom or home reading was to be supplemented by computer tasks of the kind used here, some spelling problems could be circumvented without costly intervention by a teacher or a special trainer.     

Eye-hand span and coding of text during copytyping.

Concurrent oculomotor and manual activities during copytyping were examined to determine whether (a) typists keep the eyes 1-s ahead of the executed keypress, (b) control of eye-hand (E-H) coordination follows the lexical representation of to-be-typed text, and (c) typists seek visual information beyond the boundaries of the fixated word. To-be-typed text contained high- and low-frequency target words that were either short or long. Two viewing conditions were used revealing either the directly fixated word only or the fixated word plus the next word in the text. The results showed no support for the 1-s E-H lag hypothesis. The E-H span was also not affected by the visibility of text but was a function of word frequency, suggesting that E-H coordination follows the lexical representation of text. Effects of window size indicated that typists seek visual information beyond the boundaries of the fixated word.     

Syllables and spelling units affect feature integration in words

Three experiments showed that syllables and spelling patterns function as higher order units in word perception. Subjects were required to identify the color of a target letter in briefly presented words composed of different-colored letters. In Experiment 1, subjects incorrectly reported the color of a nontarget letter (conjunction error) more often in one-syllable words containing few spelling units than in two-syllable words containing many spelling units. Experiment 2 showed that subjects made more conjunction errors in one-syllable words than in two-syllable words when the number of spelling patterns was controlled. Experiment 3 showed that conjunction errors decreased as spelling units increased when the number of syllables was held constant. Experiments 1 and 3 also showed that more conjunction errors occurred within syllabic and spelling units than between these units. These findings are discussed in light of previous research on syllable and spelling pattern effects.     

汉语双字词的心理词典存储—来自发展性阅读障碍个案的证据

研究探讨了发展性阅读障碍个案S汉字命名过程选择性错误的产生机制。汉字命名、词汇判断和组词实验有三个主要发现,个案S在汉字命名过程中产生大量的选择性错误,选择性错误在复合词中发生的前后位置没有显著差异;S在词汇判断过程中,混淆词汇中两个词素的先后顺序;S对产生选择性错误的汉字组词的数量显著少于控制组,且其产生选择性错误的复合词的频率显著高于他组出的其他词汇频率。研究以Zhou&Marslen-Wilson(2000)的复合词的多水平平行结构心理词典模型为基础讨论了这些发现的理论意义,并着重分析了汉字命名过程中词素频率和词汇意义结构之间的交互作用。     

Investigating the boundaries of reading units: letter detection in misspelled words

In two experiments, subjects searching for the letter t in passages that contained some misspellings made many more errors on the word the than on other correctly spelled words. Accuracy increased dramatically when the word the and the other words containing t were misspelled, even when the misspelled word was the same shape as the original. These findings define a word-inferiority effect, which stands in contrast to the superior perception of letters in words over nonwords commonly found in tachistoscopic studies. In a third experiment, subjects searched for the letter n in passages typed normally or typed with all interword spaces replaced by the symbol +. Detection errors on the word and were greatly reduced when the interword spaces were replaced by +s, but errors on other words, including those ending in the suffix morpheme -ing, were not affected by this manipulation. These results suggest that frequent function words are processed in terms of reading units that are larger than the letter and include the interword spaces.     

When does word meaning affect immediate serial recall in semantic dementia?

Patients with semantic dementia can show superior immediate recall of words that they still understand relatively well, as compared with more semantically degraded words, suggesting that conceptual knowledge makes a major contribution to phonological short-term memory. However, a number of studies have failed to show such a recall difference, challenging this view. We examined the effect of several methodological factors on the recall of known and degraded words in 4 patients with semantic dementia, in order to investigate possible reasons for this discrepancy. In general, our patients did exhibit poorer recall of the degraded words and made more phonological errors on these items. In addition, set size affected the magnitude of the recall advantage for known words. This finding suggests that semantic degradation influenced the rate of learning in the immediate recall task when the same items were presented repeatedly. The methods used to select known and degraded items also impacted on the recall difference. List length, however, did not affect the advantage for known words. The coherence of items in phonological short-term memory was affected by their semantic status, but not by the length of the material to be retained. The implications of these findings for the role of semantic and phonological representations in verbal short-term memory are discussed.     

Acquisition process of typing skill using hierarchical materials in the Japanese language

In the present study, using a new keyboard layout with only eight keys, we conducted typing training for unskilled typists. In this task, Japanese college students received training in typing words consisting of a pair of hiragana characters with four keystrokes, using the alphabetic input method, while keeping the association between the keys and typists’ finger movements; the task was constructed so that chunking was readily available. We manipulated the association between the hiragana characters and alphabet letters (hierarchical materials: overlapped and nonoverlapped mappings). Our alphabet letter materials corresponded to the regular order within each hiragana word (within the four letters, the first and third referred to consonants, and the second and fourth referred to vowels). Only the interkeystroke intervals involved in the initiation of typing vowel letters showed an overlapping effect, which revealed that the effect was markedly large only during the early period of skill development (the effect for the overlapped mapping being larger than that for the nonoverlapped mapping), but that it had diminished by the time of late training. Conversely, the response time and the third interkeystroke interval, which are both involved in the latency of typing a consonant letter, did not reveal an overlapped effect, suggesting that chunking might be useful with hiragana characters rather than hiragana words. These results are discussed in terms of the fan effect and skill acquisition. Furthermore, we discuss whether there is a need for further research on unskilled and skilled Japanese typists.     

Phonetic factors in letter detection: A reevaluation

Three experiments in which subjects searched for the letter e in printed text were conducted to examine the effects of phonetic factors in silent reading. In Experiment 1, subjects made more errors on silent es than on pronounced es, but silent es always occurred at the ends of words, whereas pronounced es occurred in the middle of words. In Experiment 2, all instances of the letter e occurred in the penultimate location in the words, and no effects of letter voicing were obtained. In Experiment 3, subjects made more errors on es in unstressed syllables than on es in stressed syllables in three-syllable words. However, this effect occurred only for es in the second and third syllables and only for the more common words. All three experiments yielded large effects of word frequency, which were reduced in passages printed in alternating typecase. It was concluded that letter detection is affected by syllable stress but not by letter voicing and that the stress effect depends on whether the subject is able to form reading units at the syllable level.     

Neighborhood effects in visual word recognition: Facilitatory or inhibitory?

In five experiments, in which subjects were to identify a target word as it was gradually clarified, we manipulated the target's frequency of occurrence in the language and its neighborhood size—the number of words that can be constructed from a target word by changing one letter, while preserving letter position. In Experiments 1–4, visual identification performance to screen-fragmented words was measured. In Experiments 1 and 2, we used the ascending method of limits, whereas Experiments 3 and 4 presented a fixed-level fragment. In Experiment 1, there was no relation between overall accuracy and neighborhood size for-words-between three and six letters in length. However, more errors of commission (guesses) were made for high-neighborhood words and more errors of omission (blanks) were made for low-neighborhood words. Letter errors within guesses occurred at serial positions having many neighbors, and these positions were also likely to contain consonants rather than vowels. In Experiment 2, a smallfacilitatory effect of neighborhood size on bothhigh- and low-frequency words was found. In contrast, in Experiments 3 and 4, using the same set of words,inhibitory effects of neighborhood size, but only for low-frequency words, were found. Experiment 5, using a speeded identification task, showed results parallel to those of Experiments 3 and 4. We suggest that whether neighborhood effects are facilitatory or inhibitory depends on whether feedback allows subjects to disconfirm initial hypotheses that the target is a high-frequency neighbor.     

On the origins of age‐of‐acquisition effects in the perception of printed words

Children from different grades were tested in a lexical decision task. Word‐stimuli consisted of words acquired in their respective grades, and in grades previous to their own. The results showed that the proportion of errors for newly acquired words increased steadily with grade (i.e. first graders made fewer errors with words of grade one than fifth graders with words of grade five). However, the proportion of errors for words acquired in a given grade remained constant throughout the following grades (fifth graders made as many errors with words acquired in grade one as first graders did). These results indicate that the strong impact that age‐ or order‐of‐acquisition of words has on the way words will be recognized is in place at a very young age.     

Dissociation of inflectional and derivational morphology

A patient is described who makes morphological errors in spontaneous sentence production and in repetition of single words. The great majority of these errors were substitutions of inflectional affixes. The patient did make some derivational errors in repeating derived words but almost never made such errors for nonderived words. The inflectional errors for adjectives and nouns occurred mostly on the plural forms for nouns and adjectives and on the feminine form for adjectives. For verbs, inflectional errors were produced for all tense, aspect, and mood forms. There were no indications that these latter verb features constrained the form of inflectional errors produced. The results are interpreted as support for the thesis that morphological processes are located in the lexicon but that inflectional and derivational processes constitute autonomous subcomponents of the lexicon.     

Coding factors in transcription

Two experiments looked at aspects of stimulus grouping by trainee typists and tested for the possibility of response grouping. Manipulating text preview indicated that typing speed declined if the next word was not wholly on display but, conversely, there was little gain if it was displayed much in advance of its being typed. Some of the effect of practice was specific to the words actually typed: words not presented during practice were typed slower than practised ones; others given reinforced practice were typed quicker than the rest. An analysis of response latencies provides evidence that response grouping sometimes occurred.     

Multiplication by eye and by ear for Chinese-speaking and English-speaking adults.

English-speaking (n = 32) and Chinese-speaking adults (n = 32) solved single-digit multiplication problems. In one condition, problems were presented as visual digits (e.g., 8 x 9). In the other condition, problems were presented as auditory number words in the participant's first language (e.g., /eit/ /taimz/ /nain/). Chinese-speaking adults made proportionately more operand-intrusion errors (e.g., 4 x 8 = 24) than English-speaking adults. Both groups made more operand-intrusion errors with auditory than with visual presentation. These findings are similar to those found when participants solve problems presented as visual number words (e.g., eight x nine), suggesting that in both cases the activation of phonological codes interferes with processing.     

Orthographic effects in the word substitutions of aphasic patients: an epidemic of right neglect dyslexia?

Aphasic patients with reading impairments frequently substitute incorrect real words for target words when reading aloud. Many of these word substitutions have substantial orthographic overlap with their targets and are classified as "visual errors" (i.e., sharing 50% of targets' letters in the same relative position). Fifteen chronic aphasic patients read a battery of words and non-words; non-word reading was poor for all patients, and more than 50% of errors on words involved the substitution of a non-target word. An investigation of the factors conditioning these word substitutions, as well as the production of visual errors, identified a number of similarities to patterns previously reported for patients with right neglect dyslexia, which has been said to occur relatively rarely. These included a strong tendency for errors to overlap targets in initial letter positions, maintenance of target length in errors, and the substitution of words higher in imageability than targets. It is proposed that left hemisphere damage frequently leads to disruption of a level of representation for written words in which letter position is ordinally coded, resulting in exacerbation of a normal processing advantage for early letter positions. A computational model is discussed that incorporates this level of representation and successfully simulates relevant normal and patient data.     

A Developmental Study of Chinese Children’s Word and Character Reading

To investigate the relationship between Chinese children’s character and word reading, 62 third and 50 fifth grade children in Hong Kong were asked to read single characters and words that were comprised of these characters. Results showed that words helped children to recognize characters for both grades of children. Compared to older children, younger children’s character reading was more likely to rely on the word that the character appeared in as a component; younger children made more errors in confusing the correct character with words related to it. Younger children’s greater rate of meaning-related errors also underscored the role of the word in their character learning. This study confirmed the important role of words in children’s character learning, and provided evidence for a developmental pattern of character and word reading in Chinese.     

The effects of flicker on eye movement control

Groups of typists with extensive experience of screen-based editing and groups of students with no such experience carried out a reading task under three conditions of illumination (50-Hz flicker, 100-Hz flicker, and steady illumination). Subjects read a sentence, which was followed by the presentation of a single stimulus word on the same line to the right-hand side of the display. The task was to decide whether or not the stimulus was present in the sentence. Subjects were free to re-inspect the sentence when making the decision. Eye movements were measured as subjects completed the task. In comparison with students, typists adopted a more cautious reading style, making more right-to-left saccades, shorter saccades, and more corrective eye movements. Flicker affected the performance of both groups of subjects in the first pass, leading to shorter saccades. In the second pass, its effect for students was to shorten the extent of large saccades made to check the presence of the stimulus word. In the group of typists, flicker led to an increase in the variability of saccade extent and a doubling in the number of small corrective saccades. The results are consistent with the view that flicker has two distinct effects on reading, both of which are potentially disruptive. The first relates to an increase in the number of prematurely triggered saccades, which are, as a result, less accurate. The second is an increase in the number of saccades perturbed in flight, which land short of their intended target. These two mechanisms may have different consequences for readers, depending on their reading style.