Fact · Typing and writing speed
In a 2009 experiment, cueing skilled typists to attend to the letters of one hand slowed their typing and raised their error rate.
Checked against its source on October 16, 2026
In the source's own words
“Cuing the hands disrupted performance markedly, slowing typing and increasing the error rate”
The Left Hand Doesn't Know What the Right Hand Is Doing: The Disruptive Effects of Attention to the Hands in Skilled Typewriting, Gordon D. Logan and Matthew J. C. Crump, Psychological Science, 2009, Abstract.
Open the original (DOI 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02442.x)- What it measures
- Skilled typists typed words after cues that told them which letters to type, and the cues that drew attention to the hands were the disruptive ones.
- What it does not show
- This is a laboratory experiment on attention. It shows that looking at or thinking about the hands disrupts typing, not that any particular training method works.