Measuring and Assessing Typing Skills in Writing Research

verfasst von

Luuk Van Waes, Mariëlle Leijten, Jens Roeser, Thierry Olive, Joachim Grabowski

Abstract

In keyboard writing, typing skills are considered an important prerequisite of proficient text production. We describe the design, implementation, and application of a standardized copy-typing task in order to measure and assess individual typing fluency. A test-retest analysis indicates the instrument’s reliability. While the task has been developed across eleven different languages and the related keyboard layouts, we here refer to a corpus of Dutch copy tasks (N = 1682). Analyses show that copying speed non-linearly varies with age. Bayesian analyses reveal differences in the typing performance and the underlying distributions of inter-key intervals between the different task components (e.g., lexical vs. non-lexical materials; high-frequent vs. lowfrequent bigrams). Based on these findings it is strongly recommended to include copy-task measures in the analysis of keystroke logging data in writing studies. This supports a better comparability and interpretability of keystroke data from more complex or communicatively-embedded writing tasks across individuals. Further potential applications of the copy task for writing research are explained and discussed.

Organisationseinheit(en)

Institut für Psychologie

Externe Organisation(en)

Universiteit Antwerpen (UAntwerpen)
Nottingham Trent University
Universite de Poitiers

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Journal of Writing Research

Band

13

Seiten

107-153

Anzahl der Seiten

47

ISSN

2030-1006

Publikationsdatum

2021

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Ausbildung bzw. Denomination, Sprache und Linguistik, Linguistik und Sprache, Literatur und Literaturtheorie

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.17239/JOWR-2021.13.01.04 (Zugang: Offen)