Writing in a Digital World: Self-Correction While Typing in Younger and Older Adults

This study examined how younger and older adults approach simple and complex computerized writing tasks. Nineteen younger adults (age range 21–31, mean age 26.1) and 19 older adults (age range 65–83, mean age 72.1) participated in the study. Typing speed, quantitative measures of outcome and process, and self-corrections were recorded. Younger adults spent a lower share of their time on actual typing, and demonstrated more prevalent use of delete keys than did older adults. Within the older group, there was no correlation between the total time spent on the entire task and the number of corrections, but increased typing speed was related to more errors. The results suggest that the approach to the task was different across age groups, either because of age or because of cohort effects. We discuss the interplay of speed and accuracy with regard to digital writing, and its implications for the design of human-computer interactions.