A recent set of experiments found that a majority of skilled typists failed to “map more than an average of 15 keys on a QWERTY keyboard”:
The basic theory of “automatic learning” … asserts that people learn actions for skill-based work consciously and store the details of why and how in their short-term memory. Eventually the why and how of a certain action fades, but the performative action remains. However, in the case of typing, it appears that we don’t even store the action—that is, we have little to no “explicit knowledge” of the keyboard. In the first experiment conducted, the typists averaging 72 wpm and 94 percent accuracy were given 80 seconds to write letters in the correct places on a QWERTY keyboard. On average, they got 57 percent right and 22.3 percent wrong, and they forgot the rest.
In a second experiment, the researchers showed participants a simulation in which a key on a blank keyboard would be highlighted, and the participant would have to name which letter it was. Participants hardly performed better at this test, getting the keys right only around 55 percent of the time on the first try. Participants who were allowed to mime typing on the picture where the key was did slightly better, with just over 65 percent on the first try.
(Hat tip: Colin Schulz)
