What Can Typing Tell Us About Language Production?

Although research on typing has not exactly been sparse, studying typing within a psycholinguistic framework has not been a common approach. This article argues in favor of this practice. By reviewing findings on patterns of typing errors and statistical learning in typed production, as well as influences of various factors on typing, including the similarity between the target word and its context, we show that typing has much in common with other modalities of language production and should be viewed as reflecting the general architecture of the language production system. We then discuss some of the contributions of typing research to the action-monitoring literature due to the unique position that typing occupies at the intersection of phonological, orthographic, visual, and motor processes. We end by encouraging greater integration of typing research into psycholinguistic frameworks, not simply to confirm the predictions of such theories but to break new frontiers and push for new domains of inquiry.