Tpyos: How the Barin is Arwae of its Mstiaeks

The typo: every perfectionist’s worst nightmare as he looks over his paper, just minutes before handing it in. It may be true that word processing programs keep developing more advanced spell check and auto correct features, but even the best computer can miss some mistakes we make while typing. In addition, while quickly reading over our words, we are prone to not catching some of the spelling errors. It turns out that the master detectors of all keyboard related errors are our very fingers themselves.

Experimenters tested subjects (skilled typists, who could type 40 words per minute with about 90% accuracy, and used all of their fingers while typing) by creating a word processor that would secretly fix a typist’s real spelling errors, and also create new errors in words initially typed correctly. Subjects took both the blame for the errors that were not truly theirs, and the credit for the researcher’s corrections. Despite what was actually typed, the subjects believed that the words they intended to type were actually displayed on the screen, indicating inaccuracy in their conscious analyses of their individual performances.

The typists’ motor signals, on the other hand, weren’t duped so easily. It turns out that the speed at which the subjects typed was reduced for the next keystroke after hitting the “wrong” key, even if the researchers tried to deceive the subjects by correcting one of their errors on the screen. So despite the subjects’ beliefs that all of the presented error and accuracy at the end of the experiment was attributed to themselves alone, their bodies were able to distinguish their true errors. “The body is doing one thing and the mind is doing another,” says psychologist Gordon Logan of Vanderbilt University. “What we found was that the fingers knew the truth."

These results may suggest a “hierarchical method of error correction”; the motor system does the work while several cortical areas assign causal characteristics such as blame and credit. Essentially, these two processes are entirely disassociated, so that the hands and fingers can catch errors that the mind cannot. Not convinced? Try typing a paragraph with your eyes closed. Chances are you will know when you make an error, and automatically go back to fix it. It is suggested that typing is just another activity that we do on autopilot without thinking, liken to walking or doing some other familiar task. Perhaps this can be viewed as the brain's way of providing multiple methods of checking for error -- a reliable autopilot, and a proofreading/ error attributing "higher" cortical system. If our conscious places that much confidence in our "autopilot" , perhaps it is safe to assume we can trust the driver.

To read more, click the link: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/fingers-know-typos/

Sidenote: To illustrate how easy it is to miss a typo, take a look at the title above. I bet that you can easily read each word, despite the jumbled letters. This is because the mind doesn’t read every letter individually, but rather groups them together and reads the word as a whole (the only necessity is that the first and last letters are in the right place). Now imagine trying to catch a typo when reading quickly under time induced stress... not likely.