Reaction Time of the Fingers with Responses Measured on a Typewriter Keyboard

Reaction times on each of the eight fingers were obtained for 24 skilled typists using an electric typewriter and a mechanical timer. Repeated-measures analysis of variance indicated significant differences among the mean reaction times of the eight fingers. Scheffé's multiple-comparison procedure indicated that the mean reaction time of each finger differed from that of every other finger and that the mean reaction time of the finers on the left hand was significantly slower than the mean reaction time of fingers on the right hand. The average inter-class correlation coefficient among the fingers was .92 which indicated rank-order of reaction times to be similar across fingers.