Eye-hand span and coding of text during copytyping

Concurrent oculomotor and manual activities during copytyping were examined to determine whether (a) typists keep the eyes 1-s ahead of the executed keypress, (b) control of eye-hand (E-H) coordination follows the lexical representation of to-be-typed text, and (c) typists seek visual information beyond the boundaries of the fixated word. To-be-typed text contained high- and low-frequency target words that were either short or long. Two viewing conditions were used revealing either the directly fixated word only or the fixated word plus the next word in the text. The results showed no support for the 1-s E-H lag hypothesis. The E-H span was also not affected by the visibility of text but was a function of word frequency, suggesting that E-H coordination follows the lexical representation of text. Effects of window size indicated that typists seek visual information beyond the boundaries of the fixated word.