Age and skill differences in typing related and unrelated reaction time tasks

Abstract

Sixty-five typists ranging in age from 21-68 years and in skill from 28-91 net words/minute participated in an experiment examining age-related differences in motor performance. Two tasks were employed, digraph typing and choice reaction time, which assessed the latencies to type two consecutive keystrokes. the results for both tasks replicated results reported by Bosman (1993) suggesting that low skill older typists exhibit a deficit in both the translation and execution components of motor performance, whereas high skill older typists exhibit a deficit in translation only. the generalizability of typing-related experience to a novel task was assessed by examining the effect of typing skill on choice reaction time performance. the results indicated that skilled typists were not advantaged for translation. However, skilled typists were advantaged for execution, and the benefit of skill was greatest for older typists.