USING WORDS INSTEAD OF JUMBLED CHARACTERS AS STIMULI INKEYBOARD TRAINING FACILITATES FLUENT PERFORMANCE

ANTHONY DEFULIO, DARLENE E. CRONE-TODD, LAUREN V. LONG,PAUL A. NUZZO, AND KENNETH SILVERMAN

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Keyboarding skill is an important target for adult education programs due to the ubiquity ofcomputers in modern work environments. A previous study showed that novice typists learnedkey locations quickly but that fluency took a relatively long time to develop. In the present study,novice typists achieved fluent performance in nearly half the time when words rather thanjumbled characters were used as stimuli. This suggests that using real words in the keyboardingprogram can enhance the efficiency of training.

Key words: typing, fluency, adult education, job skills, workforce development

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Keyboarding is an important target skill inadult education curricula because effective key-boarding is a prerequisite for jobs and advancedtraining programs that require computer skills.A previous study showed that a self-pacedcomputerized keyboarding program was effectivein training unemployed drug-dependent adultsto become proficient typists (Dillon, Wong,Sylvest, Crone-Todd, & Silverman, 2004). Inthat study, trainees learned the locations ofkeyboard keys quickly, but 85.6% of the trainingtime was spent developing fluent (i.e., fast andaccurate) typing performance. Increasing theefficiency of fluency training could have sub-stantial practical value because limited time andmoney are available for job-skills training.

Studies of expert typing performance havefound that manipulating the kind of text that istranscribed produces large effects on keyboardingperformance. Fendrick (1937) found that wordswere typed faster than word jumbles (characterstrings created by randomly arranging the charac-

ters of a matched word; hereafter, jumbles), and thatgreater typing skill was correlated with a largerdifference in speed when typing words rather thanjumbles. Hershman and Hillix (1965) tested experttypists and found that experts typed words fasterthan randomly arranged characters, and that thisdifference increased as greater amounts of text werepresented. Shaffer and Hardwick (1968) foundthat professional typists typed words significantlyfaster than matched jumbles. Although thesestudies suggest that the kind of text that is beingtranscribed can have dramatic effects on the speedof typing performance, we could find no studiesthat have attempted to determine the effects ofdifferent kinds of text on the acquisition of typingperformance. In light of Fendrick’s finding that lessskilled yet still-competent typists showed fewerdifferences in performance when typing wordsrather than jumbles, it is possible that the differenttypes of text may not affect the acquisition oftyping performance. Thus, the purpose of thepresent study was to determine whether the fluentperformance of different types of text would beacquired at differential rates by novice, adultlearners.

METHOD

Participants and Setting

The study protocol was approved by theWestern Institutional Review Board and was

Please address correspondence to the first author at 5200Eastern Ave., Ste. W142, Baltimore, Maryland 21224(e-mail: defulio@jhmi.edu).

doi: 10.1901/jaba.2011.44-921

This work was supported by NIDA Grants R01DA012564, R01DA023864 and T32DA07209. DarleneCrone-Todd is currently at Salem State University; LaurenLong is currently at the University of Maryland School ofMedicine. We thank Jackie Hampton and Mick Needham fortheir help in conducting the study.

JOURNAL OF APPLIED BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS 2011, 44, 921–924 NUMBER 4 (WINTER 2011)

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conducted in a therapeutic workplace in Balti-more, Maryland. Unemployed methadone pa-tients (N 5 43), who were enrolled in a study ofemployment-based abstinence contingencies forthe treatment of cocaine dependence and whocompleted at least one set of fluency steps,participated in the present study. A descriptionof the study of cocaine dependence is availableelsewhere (Silverman et al., 2007). One partici-pant included in the present study was excludedfrom the cocaine-dependence study but experi-enced the intervention. All participants wereunemployed and living in poverty, and 58% helda high school diploma or equivalent. The meanage of the participants was 45 years (range, 25to 56). Participants were assigned to a personalcubicle equipped with a computer. Keyboardswere enclosed in black plastic covers so that theletters on the keys could not be read while typ-ing. The program was controlled by Web-basedsoftware contained in an on-site server (Silvermanet al., 2005).

The therapeutic workplace was open for 4 hreach weekday, and participants could work onkeyboarding between 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.Participants typically earned $8.00 per hour andan additional $2.00 per hour in productivitypayments. Productivity pay included paymentsof $0.03 for every 20 correct characters typed,2$0.02 for every two incorrect characterstyped, and step-mastery bonuses ranging from$0.25 to $1.25. On any given timing, produc-tivity pay could not fall below $0. Paymentswere issued as vouchers exchangeable for goodsand services. Prior to beginning the study,participants received written and oral instruc-tions that described the payment contingenciesand explained how to operate a keyboard anda mouse, use the training program, and useproper keyboarding technique. The participantskept these instructions and a diagram showingthe location of all keys at their workstations.

Keyboarding Program

The content of the program was organizedinto a series of steps. The program began with

new key steps that introduced the home rowcharacters. This was followed by 20 fluencysteps in which no new characters were intro-duced. Half of the fluency steps consisted ofwords (hereafter, word steps), and the remainingfluency steps consisted of jumbles (hereafter,jumble steps). These two kinds of fluency stepswere intermixed as described below. Overall, asequence in which 20 fluency steps followed avariable number of new key steps was repeatedfour times. Training steps introduced homerow, top row, bottom row, and capital lettersand common symbols across this repeatedsequence. In total, the program consisted of38 training steps and 80 fluency steps. Onlythe fluency steps are included in the presentanalyses.

The steps were delivered in 1-min timingsinitiated by the participants. During each timing,the letters, words, or jumbles included in thestep were displayed randomly with replacementon the computer monitor, and the participantcopied the display. Characters typed by theparticipant appeared just below the line of textthat was being copied. New text was presentedimmediately after the participant finished copy-ing everything on the screen. Mastery criteriafor each step included a minimum number ofcorrect characters (60 to 90, depending on thestep) and a maximum number of incorrectcharacters (three to one, depending on the step).After the timing was completed, the numberof correct and incorrect characters typed andearnings for that timing were displayed. If themastery criteria were satisfied, a congratulatorymessage specifying the bonus earned for stepcompletion appeared, and the participant pro-ceeded to the next step. If the mastery criteriawere not met, the criteria and productivitypayments arranged for work on that step weredisplayed and the participant stayed on the samestep. A more detailed description of a programwith the same essential features is availableelsewhere (Dillon et al., 2004).

922 ANTHONY DEFULIO et al.

Fluency Step Construction and the Order ofPresentation of Fluency Steps

The fluency steps were created using four listsof common words that were derived fromcharacters that had been introduced only at thatpoint in training (e.g., the first list includedwords that could be typed using only keysavailable on the home row). No word wasincluded on more than one list. The characterswithin each word in each list were processedwith a random sequence generator to create thejumbles. The generator was unconstrained, and58 (5%) of the 1,167 jumbles were words. Wordsteps were constructed by selecting words onthe relevant list, and a matched jumble step wascreated using jumbles that corresponded to eachword included in a word step. This procedureinsured that the characters, the average numberof characters per component, and the number ofcomponents were held constant across the twotypes of steps. A predetermined order of wordand jumble steps was generated pseudorandomlysuch that no more than three steps of one typecould be presented successively. A second versionof the program then was created in which theorder of presentation of word and jumble stepswas reversed.

DesignThis study employed a crossover design

because the primary purpose was to investi-gate how a key design feature of our trainingprogram would affect the overall efficiency ofour program at the group level. The logic of thisdesign is similar to other group designs, butinstead of controlling for participant differencesby random assignment to the experimentalconditions, each participant serves as his or herown control (Ratkowsky, Evans, & Alldredge,1993). Because each participant repeatedlyexperienced both kinds of fluency steps, wecontrolled for order effects by alternatelyassigning participants to the two versionsprogram. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests were usedto analyze the data because the data were notnormally distributed.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Fluency was acquired more rapidly when wordswere used as stimuli than when jumbles were used(Figure 1, top; Z 5 24.86; p , .001). Groupmedians for the number of 1-min timings tomastery were 13.7 and 18.9, and group meanswere 18.6 and 33.6 for words and jumbles,respectively. The highest number of correctresponses in a single timing was greater on wordsteps than on jumble steps (Figure 1, bottom;Z 5 23.88, p , .001). Group medians for thehighest number of correct responses on a single

Figure 1. Top panel shows the number of 1-mintimings required to meet fluency criteria on word andjumble steps. Each symbol shows the mean value for anindividual participant across all steps completed by thatparticipant. The bottom panel shows the maximumnumber of characters typed in a 1-min timing on wordsteps (triangles) and jumble steps (bars) for each participant.Data are organized in descending order of the maximumnumber of characters typed in a 1-min timing on word steps.

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timing were 98 and 95, and group means were104 and 98.2 for words and jumbles, respectively.Most participants (31 of 43; 72.1%) were fasteron word steps than on jumble steps. Thedifferences were typically small, although someparticipants were substantially faster on wordsteps. For the eight participants who were fasteron jumble steps, the difference was minimal.These results are consistent with prior studies inwhich individuals with well-established typingskills typed words faster than jumbles or randomcharacters (Fendrick, 1937; Hershman & Hillix,1965; Shaffer & Hardwick, 1968). This studyextends the finding to the acquisition of typingfluency by novice typists. Note that the order ofpresentation did not significantly affect mediantimings to mastery (p 5 .19) or the highestnumber of correct responses in a timing (p 5 .29).

The differences in fluency training time in thisstudy have practical value. The fluency trainingportion of the program typically includes 40 totalsteps. The difference in average completion time inthis study was 15 min per step. This means that forthe program as a whole, using word-based stepsreduced the average number of 1-min timings by600 (i.e., 40 3 15). Our participants averaged 331-min timings per hour of training. Thus, usingword-based fluency training required 18.2 fewerhours of training time (600 4 33 5 18.2). InDillon et al. (2004), trainees took an average of51.5 hr to complete fluency training. Whenapplied to the present results, this suggests thatusing words rather than jumbles may reduce overalltraining time by as much as 35%. Because traineesare paid $10.00 per hour, 18.2 fewer hours oftraining time also translates to approximately$180.00 less per trainee in keyboarding trainingcosts. On average, fluent performance was achievedin nearly half the time when words rather thanjumbles were used as stimuli. Using words ratherthan jumbles during fluency training had asubstantial effect on adult trainees’ progressthrough the program.

This study has several limitations. First,because no assessment of reading skill was

conducted, we cannot evaluate the relationbetween reading skill and typing performance.The effect of words as training stimuli must bemediated by reading skill, because to anonreader, the order of characters in a stringis functionally irrelevant. It is likely that theparticipants differed substantially with respectto reading skill, because many did not have ahigh school diploma or equivalent qualification.Thus, much of the variability in the presentresults could be a function of differences inreading skill. A second limitation is that wedid not independently assess typing skill as afunction of the type of training received. It istherefore possible that jumble steps ultimatelyproduce improvements in typing skill thatwould cancel the benefits of using word steps.Thus, a future study that includes assessment ofreading skill and independent typing skillsbefore and after training is warranted.

REFERENCES

Dillon, E. M., Wong, C. J., Sylvest, C. E., Crone-Todd,D. E., & Silverman, K. (2004). Computer-basedtyping and keypad skills training outcomes ofunemployed injection drug users in a therapeuticworkplace. Substance Use and Misuse, 39, 2325–2353.

Fendrick, P. (1937). Hierarchical skills in typewriting.Journal of Educational Psychology, 28, 609–620.

Hershman, R. L., & Hillix, W. A. (1965). Data processingin typing: Typing rate as a function of kind of materialand amount exposed. Human Factors, 7, 483–492.

Ratkowsky, D. A., Evans, M. A., & Alldredge, J. R.(1993). Cross-over experiments: Design, analysis, andapplication. New York: Marcel Dekker.

Shaffer, L. H., & Hardwick, J. (1968). Typing perfor-mance as a function of text. Quarterly Journal ofExperimental Psychology, 20, 360–369.

Silverman, K., Wong, C. J., Grabinski, M. J., Hampton,J., Sylvest, C. E., Dillon, E. M., et al. (2005). A web-based therapeutic workplace for the treatment of drugaddiction and chronic unemployment. BehaviorModification, 29, 417–463.

Silverman, K., Wong, C. J., Needham, M., Diemer,K. N., Knealing, T. W., Crone-Todd, D., et al. (2007).A randomized trial of employment-based reinforcementof cocaine abstinence in injection drug users. Journal ofApplied Behavior Analysis, 40, 387–410.

Received June 9, 2010Final acceptance April 1, 2011Action Editor, Jesse Dallery

924 ANTHONY DEFULIO et al.