A Multilingual Copy Task: Measuring Typing and Motor Skills in Writing with Inputlog

Abstract

Keyboarding is an essential mode of text production. In the context of typing courses, instruments have been developed to gauge typing skills but to our knowledge there is no computerized typing test measuring both motor skills and the influence of different levels of lexicality on typing fluency. That is why, we developed a strictly controlled copy task guiding participants through seven modules in which different prompts are presented, each dealing with complementary levels of lexicality. Fine-grained keystroke logging allows for a range of analyses with Inputlog [16]. The copy task can be used in writing process studies: research shows that typing fluency has an impact in the quality of text production [1, 24]. In previous writing research studies copy tasks have been used to study the relation between writing fluency and text composition (Wallot and Grabowski, 2013). The Inputlog copy task allows researchers to investigate different levels of lexicality in more detail. At the moment the copy task has been developed in ten different languages. The software is open-access and allows researchers to adapt the tasks to their specific needs. Funding statement: We thank the department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) for their financial contribution to this project. We also received support of ELN (European Literacy Network – COST Action IS1401).

Keywords

• copy tasks
• typing skills
• motor coordination
• keyboarding
• writing studies
• interkey intervals
• bigram frequency
• tapping task
• typing fluency