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.