Transfer Effects of Long-Term and High-Frequency Web Service Use on Target-Pointing Performance

Prior work has shown that skills acquired through repeated computer-based tasks can transfer to similar tasks. While typical experiments span only up to several days, it remains unclear whether such transfer effects would be evident over longer learning periods. To address this question, we measured the target-tapping performance of 912 crowdworkers and analyzed its relationship with their usage logs of Yahoo! JAPAN services. Our analysis included data of unprecedented scale, featuring users holding Yahoo! JAPAN accounts for over 24 years, performing over 100,000 taps annually, or viewing over 180,000 pages annually (with at least ten users in each category). Results showed that a longer account age was correlated with improved tap performance, whereas a higher number of taps over the past year was negatively correlated with tap performance. More in-depth analyses also revealed that the performance trends varied depending on the specific services that were heavily used. These findings clarify the limitations of a naive assumption that long-term and heavy use of web services leads to better task performance through transfer effects.