Researchers in Canada have found that when people are forced to write at a slower speed, it can actually enhance their way with words, with the use of word choice in particular benefiting from a calmer pace.

“Typing can be too fluent or too fast, and can actually impair the writing process,” said Srdan Medimorec, a cognitive psychologist from the University of Waterloo. “It seems that what we write is a product of the interactions between our thoughts and the tools we use to express them.”

To examine how an enforced speed limit might affect writing ability, the researchers recruited participants and asked them to write essays using both hands or with only one.

When the researchers examined the essays with text-analysis software, they discovered that the impeded, one-handed typing was better, especially with regard to the sophistication of the vocabulary used.

“This is the first study to show that when you interfere with people’s typing, their writing can get better,” said Evan F. Risko, one of the team.

The authors of the study — which is published in the British Journal of Psychology — believe that by being forced to slow down when typing, writers enjoy greater time to conduct an internal word search. This gives them a larger variety of terms to subsequently choose from, whereas fast typists may simply write down the first word they think of, which could result in poorer, less considered prose.

“This is important to consider as writing tools continue to emerge that let us get our thoughts onto the proverbial page faster and faster,” said Risko.

The researchers say that writing ability would be improved by a slower pace regardless of how a person chooses to express themselves — whether at a keyboard, using text-to-speech programs, or pen and paper — but acknowledge that further research would be needed to verify this. It’s worth bearing in mind that the researchers in this study used software to rate people’s writing, and while a computer analysis of language is certainly useful, it’s not necessarily the best or most accurate way of gauging the quality of writing intended for a human reader.

加拿大的研究人员发现，当人们被迫慢速书写时，他们会借助这种慢节奏来推敲自己的文字，从而提高写作质量。

“打字太流畅太快，确实会给写作过程带来不良影响。”滑铁卢大学的认知心理学家瑟旦· 麦迪莫还克说，“我们写作的内容就像是我们的思想同表达工具之间交互的产物。”

为了研究强制限速如何影响写作能力，研究者招募了一批参与者，要求他们或用双手或用单手写文章。

当研究者用文本分析软件检验文章时，他们发现单手打字者的文章更胜一筹，特别体现在选用词汇的复杂性上。

“这是首个表明受干扰的打字过程能够提高写作质量的研究，”团队成员伊万· 瑞斯克说。

这项研究成果发表在了《英国心理学杂志》上，其作者认为，被强制放慢打字速度后，作者能拥有更多的时间在脑海中进行词汇搜索。

这给了他们更大的词汇选择空间，但打字快速者可能只会写下第一个想到的词，导致最后成文尚欠斟酌、质量较差。

“了解这一点非常重要，因为随着写作工具的持续更新，我们的思想会越来越快地呈现在页面上，”瑞斯克说。

研究者称，无论作者选择什么样的表达方式：键盘、文本转语音程序或是笔纸，慢速写作都能提高写作能力，不过他们也承认还需要进一步的研究来证实。

值得考虑的是，研究人员是使用软件来评估写作的，虽然电脑的语言分析有其实用价值，但它并不是评判写作质量的最佳或最精确的方式，毕竟写作的目标群体是人类读者。

    Words to Learn 相关词汇

    【复杂】fùzá sophistication complexity

    【判定】pàndìng gauge appraise, estimate, judge