Measuring and assessing typing skills in writing research

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Van Waes, L., Leijten, M., Roeser, J. ORCID: 0000-0002-4463-0923, Olive, T. and Grabowski, J., 2021. Measuring and assessing typing skills in writing research. Journal of Writing Research, 13 (1), pp. 107-153. ISSN 2030-1006

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2021.13.01.04

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.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Journal of Writing Research

Creators:

Van Waes, L., Leijten, M., Roeser, J., Olive, T. and Grabowski, J.

Publisher:

Universiteit Antwerpen

Date:

31 May 2021

Volume:

Number: