This is fascinating, and not a little disturbing. I have long understood that keyboard shortcuts that save me immense quantities of time won't help a coworker who won't take the time to learn them deep down, simply because he has to stop and think about what key sequence is the next step, while I (who've been doing it longer) can "just do it". (Actually this can be applied to almost any task, not just keyboard shortcuts.) So if I want to eliminate all duplicate values in an Excel column, I can execute all the steps in ten or fifteen seconds; but once I've explained to my boss how to do it, and he understands it, it'll still take him 60 or 120 seconds until he's done it often enough.
But this quotation would have me believe that the time I save by being familiar with the process is illusory. Is that possible? It seems to me that when I want to select a row in Excel, I don't have to think about which key sequence to find; my fingers hit <Shift-space> without conscious intervention. But the horrible plausibility of the below claim lies in the fact that I DON'T THINK ABOUT DOING IT - which is just what your article said. ...Nah, I don't buy it anyway. Any complicated task we learn, say driving a car or playing your favorite X-box action game, involves becoming familiar with commands and combinations of buttons that get us killed multiple times at first - I hope that doesn't apply to your driving, but it certainly does when learning to play EVE Online or Rainbow 6 - until you realize at some point that you're no longer thinking about the buttons as such: You experience a strong impulse to dodge right and raise shields, and both events occur, by magic apparently. Come to think of it, this is how we notice we're finally learning a language, too: I hear something and understand it without translating it, or realize that I've just said it without having to think out how. Still, you've got me a just a little worried.... --- Bob Bridges, [email protected], cell 336 382-7313 /* ...in your bedchamber do not curse a king, and in your sleeping rooms do not curse a rich man, for a bird of the heavens will carry the sound, and the winged creature will make the matter known. -Ecclesiastes 10:20 */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Pew, Curtis G Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2021 11:24 The context was comparing command-key sequences to clicking buttons or selecting menu items. Remembering the command-key sequence takes as long as moving the mouse, but the brain doesn’t perceive the time passing while remembering, while it does perceive the time passing while manipulating the mouse. -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Pew, Curtis G Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2021 11:17 The point is subjective time is heavily dependent on cognitive engagement: “People new to the mouse find the process of acquiring it every time they want to do anything other than type to be incredibly time-wasting. And therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: it is boring to find it because the two-second search does not require high-level cognitive engagement. “It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press. Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! Real amnesia! The time-slice spent making the decision simply ceases to exist. “While the keyboard users in this case feels as though they have gained two seconds over the mouse users, the opposite is really the case. Because while the keyboard users have been engaged in a process so fascinating that they have experienced amnesia, the mouse users have been so disengaged that they have been able to continue thinking about the task they are trying to accomplish. They have not had to set their task aside to think about or remember abstract symbols. “Hence, users achieve a significant productivity increase with the mouse in spite of their subjective experience.” --- On Jan 28, 2021, at 9:41 AM, Seymour J Metz <[email protected]> wrote: > What tasks were they measuring? I suspect that with a good interface the > keyboard is more productive for some tasks and the mouse more productive for > others. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
