Peer-reviewed research
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 · DOI 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02442.x
Read the originalRead on October 16, 2026
- What it is
- Three laboratory experiments in which skilled typists typed words after cues that told them to attend to the letters of one hand, to color, or to all letters. Cueing the hands slowed typing and raised the error rate.
- How much weight it carries
- Peer-reviewed in a leading psychology journal. The experiments use cued word lists in a laboratory, not everyday typing, and they test attention rather than any training method.
Facts taken from this source
- In a 2009 experiment, cueing skilled typists to attend to the letters of one hand slowed their typing and raised their error rate.
“Cuing the hands disrupted performance markedly, slowing typing and increasing the error rate” (Abstract)