Eye movements in skilled transcription typing

Abstract

Two typists’ eye movements were recorded while they transcribed short passages of text. Typists’ eye movements were found to be substantially different from eye movements of readers who read the identical stories for comprehension (Inhoff, 1984). In particular, typists’ fixation durations were increased and saccade lengths were decreased when compared to those of readers. Furthermore, eye fixations in typing appeared to be completely insensitive to contextual constraints; fixations of readers, on the other hand, are highly sensitive to contextual constraints. However, both readers’ and typists’ oculomotor behavior was affected by word frequency. © 1986, Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.