Prosodic Boundaries in Writing: Evidence from a Keystroke Analysis.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Linguistics
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Prosodic boundaries in speech (pauses and intonation) signal linguistic structure.
• It is unclear if these prosodic cues are present during the writing process.
• Punctuation marks like commas and full stops often correspond to prosodic boundaries in speech.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate keystroke durations during typing to determine if prosodic boundaries are reflected in writing.
• To examine interkey durations, especially around punctuation, and compare them to speech pauses.

Main Methods:

• A two-part experiment was conducted involving participants typing an email.
• Keystroke timings were recorded during email composition under time pressure and normal conditions.
• Participants then read their typed emails aloud, with pauses recorded at corresponding locations.

Main Results:

• Significant differences in interkey durations were found between words, commas, and full stops, increasing in that order.
• Interkey durations at punctuation marks positively correlated with silent pause durations during read speech.
• Analysis revealed patterns interpretable as phrase-final and phrase-initial lengthening at punctuation, mirroring speech.

Conclusions:

• Prosodic boundaries in speech appear to be reflected in the writing process through variations in keystroke timing.
• Keystroke interkey durations provide evidence for the influence of speech production mechanisms on writing.
• This study offers initial insights into the relationship between spoken prosody and written language production.