The QWERTY keyboard hampers schoolchildren

The introduction of microcomputers into schools has created a new generation of unskilled keyboard users whose needs are quite different from those of the skilled typist. In particular, their interaction with the keyboard is likely to be the keying in of a single word or a single letter in response to a prompt from a computer‐aided learning program, rather than the continuous typing of running text. A standard keyboard skills program for the BBC micro was adapted to allow comparison of an alphabetic (ABCDE) keyboard with the standard QWERTY keyboard layout on speed of single key processing. Three groups (age 8, 12 and 20 years) of inexperienced keyboard users were tested with each layout in a counterbalanced repeated measures design. As expected, mean response time was significantly faster for the older subjects. The major finding, however, was that, in contrast to previous studies of adult continuous typing, the QWERTY layout resulted in significantly worse performance for all three age groups. The QWERTY responses were not only slower but also showed a much greater variability than the ABCDE responses. 1985 The British Psychological Society