Cognitive Aspects Of Skilled Typewriting

Cognitive Aspects of Skilled Typewriting

This volume marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of William Book's 1908 The Psychology of Skill, in which typewriting received its first large-scale treatment from a psychological standpoint. As Book realized early on, this form of human behavior is particularly well suited to testing psychological theories of complex motor skill and its acquisition, present ing as it does a task that richly engages cognitive and motor components of programming, yet involves a form of response output that can be readily quantified. Now that typewriting is practiced so widely in workday circumstances, studying this activity offers the additional prospect of practical applicability. Until recently, relatively few studies had been conducted on the psychology of typewriting. One might speculate that this dearth of interest stemmed in part from the fact that researchers themselves rarely undertook the activity, delegating it instead to the secretarial pool. Psychological research on piano playing has produced a literature more sizable than the one on typewriting, yet the latter activity has probably been practiced for many more total human hours in this century. But contemporary developments in word processing technology have moved the typewriter into the researcher's office, and in recent years interest in accompanying psychological issues has grown.

Past, Present, and Future Contributions of Cognitive Writing Research to Cognitive Psychology

This volume tells the story of research on the cognitive processes of writing--from the perspectives of the early pioneers, the contemporary contributors, and visions of the future for the field. It includes the very latest in findings from neuroscience and experimental cognitive psychology, and provides the most comprehensive current overview on this topic.

Journal of Rehabilitation Research and Development