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Touch typing changes the way you speak: interactions between modalities of language production
Poster D7 in Poster Session D, Wednesday, October 25, 4:45 - 6:30 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Svetlana Pinet1,2, Pedro M. Paz-Alonso1,2, Clara Martin1,2; 1BCBL, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain, 2Ikerbasque, Bilbao, Spain
Separate studies have shown that speaking and writing are supported by similar brain networks and have a common cognitive architecture. However, a systematic comparison of the oral and written modalities in different elicitation contexts (e.g., picture naming vs. dictation) is still missing. Moreover, despite the high prevalence of keyboards, a range of expertise in typing skills exists, a potential discriminating factor being the ability to touch type (i.e., type without looking at your hands). The aim of this study was to systematically examine how performance varies across Output Modalities (speaking and typing) of language production as a function of several production contexts or Input Types (picture, written word, and auditory word) and expertise (touch vs. non-touch typists). Forty participants produced 240 words, half of them through speaking, the other half through typing (counterbalanced between participants), in the three indicated input types ¬–picture, written word, and auditory word (i.e., total of 40 words in each of the six experimental design cells). In addition, they performed word and non-word repetition and copying. Crucially, they performed a blind dictation typing task (typing with the hands occluded). Based on their accuracy in blind typing, participants were categorized as touch (N = 17) or non-touch (N = 23) typists for the analysis on the main experimental task. In the main experimental task, significant effects of input type and output modality were observed on performance indices (RTs and accuracy rates). Performance was higher in speaking than typing, and was better with written input than auditory input, and the lowest with a picture input. Blind typists exhibited better accuracy rates in typing but not in speaking. On RTs, there was a significant difference between touch and non-touch typists, with shorter RTs for touch typists in both typing and speaking. In speaking, the effect of group interacted with input modality, such that the difference between touch and non-touch typists was stronger following auditory input (repetition), than other input types. The production durations of touch typists were significantly shorter in typing but longer in speaking, and did not interact with input type. This pattern of effects was replicated in independent tasks of repetition and copying, with touch typists again presenting shorter RTs in both tasks. Our results suggest that overall performance was better for speaking than typing, which follows lifetime experience. The expertise that touch typists have acquired led them to perform better in typing, but also in speaking tasks. Their mastering of language production through typing seems to have consequences upstream in the production system facilitating oral language production as well. Such a systematic evaluation of linguistic processes across several input types and output modalities appears crucial to understand the general organization of the language system in different contexts of expertise.
Topic Areas: Language Production, Writing and Spelling