Citation

Wells FL. Am. J. Psychol. 1916; 27(1): 47-70.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1916, University of Illinois Press)

DOI

10.2307/1412853

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Typewriting is one of the most important industrial operations. To many persons it is the direct means of livelihood and other persons are continually undertaking its study with a view to make it such. There is perhaps no psychomotor process do directly opens to experiment in which efficieny is of such practical value. Scientific inquiries into increasing the efficiency of typewriting on the psychological side may have a two-fold aim: 1) to discover the symptoms which presage success or failure in acquiring the accomplishment, in order that the probable progress of the learner may be predicted; and 2) To study the various conditions of efficiency in typwriting as affected by different times of day and different work periods, and different techniques of operation, etc., in order to increase so far as possible the efficiency of the skilled operator. The present experiments were made to get a further insight into the means of attacking these questions and also as a practical introduction to the broad problem of studying psychomotor adaptations experimentally through the media of choice reactions.

Cited in: Burnham JC (2009). Accident Prone: A history of technology, psychology, and misfits of the machine age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN-13: 978-0-226-08117-5. The book was favorably reviewed by David Hemenway in Injury Prevention (2011), doi: 10.1136/ip.2011.031658.



Special Thanks to Dr. Burnham for providing an electronic copy of the bibliographic notes that accompany each chapter. This greatly facilitated adding previously unidentified records to the SafetyLit database. SafetyLit users may obtain a listing of the book's references by searching using the following Textword(s) Exact query: "Burnham-Accident-Prone".

Language: en