roachpatrol:

thescyfychannel:

roachpatrol:

explain-like-i-am-five:

best-shower-thoughts:

I can physically type a sentence really quick without looking at the keyboard but I cannot mentally remember the order of the keyboard. / cr

Does someone have any explanation for this? Happens to me too. For instance: I can write anything I want without looking at keyboard, but if the room is dark, I can’t write good, lots of mistakes… I am not even looking at the keyboard no matter if lights are on or off but can’t really write correctly when off.

it’s because the layout of your keyboard is stored in your procedural memory, which is what you physically know how to do, not in your explicit or declarative memory, which is facts and events you can consciously recall. 

basically, you know how to type because you know how to move your fingers, the way you know how to talk the way you know how to move your mouth. it’s not stored as facts, it’s stored as movement. you probably can’t sit there and consciously recall the exact position of your tongue, lips, and throat to say each letter, either, unless you check by doing it or carefully imagine doing it. 

Is that why the row/column shift thing happens sometimes? Like I’ll just be typing along trying to make a sentence and it’ll come out as “yjr fph od dp viyr” when I REALLY meant “the dog is so cute”??

yes, that’s precisely why. if your hand shifts just a little— or way too much— and your finger hits between keys, or a control key instead of a letter, or the edge of the keyboard, that feels wrong and you know you need to adjust. but if you shift just the right amount to the next row over, your fingers hit the center of the keys and the motion feels right, even though you’re now tapping the wrong keys, so you keep going on automatic until you consciously notice the wrong letters are appearing on screen. 

this isn’t a problem for people classically taught to keep their hands resting on the home row, because they keep their index fingers aligned with the raised nubs on f and j. but most of us have our own individual hodgepodge way we learned on our own just from using the internet. that’s also why our typing speed goes WAY down for most of us if we go from our own personal ‘incorrect’ way of typing to the hands-on-home-row ‘correct’ way— suddenly we’re moving way differently, and have to draw on our declarative memory to figure out what goes where, instead of our years and years of procedural memory. 

as another interesting note, things like opening files, moving files, and starting programs can be part of our procedural memory— just try explaining to someone who’s no good with computers what stuff you need to click, what stuff you need to double click, and what stuff you need to drag, and you’ll really notice how fluid and instinctive your handling of digital objects has become.