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Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

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Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The participant was able to communicate at about 90 characters, or 18 words, per minute. > By comparison, able-bodied people close in age to the study participant can type on a smartphone at about 23 words per minute, the authors say. Adults can type on a full keyboard at an average of about 40 words per minute.

I used to type "semi-competitively" (aka just spending a lot of time on typeracer.com) and could get around 170 WPM if I put enough effort into it. (At least when I was younger. Probably slower now.) 18 WPM would make me feel like a snail. However, I feel fairly confident that within 1 - 3 decades some kind of BCI will let any user surpass the equivalent of 200 - 300 WPM after a bit of training. And hopefully even wi…

Where do you get that confidence? Reading the article, I'm mostly seeing somewhat deliberately hyped-up claims and hand-wavey references to AI, neither of which give me much confidence in this tech taking a tremendous leap anytime soon. Still very impressive, but as someone who knows nothing about the tech, I'm not sure why I should expect it to improve so quickly?

Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#32
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. One of the reasons I hate using my phone to type is how slow I am compared to using a full keyboard. This would be hell for me.

The current generation is a bunch of thumb typers. Ye abandon all hope..

I'll second the other Gen z person in the replies and say that lots of us hate thumb typing and if we're going to generalize across every single living person by one factor, my experience is that typing speed goes down with age.

Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#33
post #30
post #23

Okay, first of all, this is great achievement. But comparing speeds isn't really necessary or even relevant. For a person that literally has no other way to communicate nobody will be complaining the can type 20% slower than a person with a smartphone. The fact they can type at all is important. Now, for the speeds, I type 80wpm/400cpm but what is more important I can also freely think while I do so. I don't even kno…

Most people use their visual cortex to see what they are typing, though. EDIT: I mean, on the screen (and perhaps some on their keyboards).

Only while they are learning. Have you noticed when you type on the phone your fingers are flying more or less without you having to actually search for the letter?

I have wondered about this and I think what is happening you actually learn the qwerty layout on your phone and the fingers already know more or less where to go and what you do visually is to just aim where your finger needs to go (ie find the center of the button) and the rest (like reading the letter) is most likely redundant.

I don't know how to or have time to test this, though.

Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#34
post #19
post #5

Shiny title with the actual typing speed so well hidden.

It's silly that it's hidden, because 18 WPM for a quadriplegic still seems extremely impressive to me, given that it's just working from brain electrodes and not some muscle the person can control. Yes, the headline is silly, because by hiding it it ended up causing the snark about 18 WPM being slow. I'm surprised, though, that the most efficient way to do this is still to have the person imagine physically drawing t…

Great point! The electrode arrays used in these studies are implanted in the participants' motor cortex in an area called the "hand knob". Neurons here are highly modulated during motor output, not only for the hand, but also for the rest of the body. This area is close to the output though, and abstract higher-level features like the "idea of an A" isn't likely to be decodable from neurons there. Future research is looking at exactly this, but will likely require recording in a different area.

For context, I did my PhD in the lab that did the work in this article.

Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#35

> A machine learning algorithm then decodes the brain patterns associated with each letter, and a computer displays the letters on a screen. The participant was able to communicate at about 90 characters, or 18 words, per minute. > By comparison, able-bodied people close in age to the study participant can type on a smartphone at about 23 words per minute, the authors say. Adults can type on a full keyboard at an ave…

Keyboard wpm is about double; ~37-44wpm is P50. Still not super fast though.

Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#36

What's the better measure of typing speed: full words correct with no typos, or full words typos included? A buddy of mine used some timing app for our typing speeds, you had to backspace repeatedly to retype a word if you misspelled it. I argued that is unrealistic, you can just use spell check or just catch the typos during your editing read through.

> What's the better measure of typing speed

Full words correct with no typos.

If you want to measure this, you're interested in the combination of reading speed and muscle memory while typing. If you're making typos, your muscle memory is not good. Using a spell checker to automatically fix those words... Well, the number is not comparable, then.

Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#37

What's the better measure of typing speed: full words correct with no typos, or full words typos included? A buddy of mine used some timing app for our typing speeds, you had to backspace repeatedly to retype a word if you misspelled it. I argued that is unrealistic, you can just use spell check or just catch the typos during your editing read through.

My typing class in high school only accepted perfect speed tests. No errors at all. Given how many typos I see in even business correspondence, I wonder if 'editing read through' has gone the way of the manual typewriter :-P

Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#38

Knowing that the average typing speed of adult humans is a measly 40 wpm gives me more faith in the failure of our species. Sir Francis Galton pioneered the study of psychometrics which showed that intelligence is positively correlated with reaction speed. So it's not surprising that the average person is slow at a cognitive task like typing.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

Are there any study precisely correlating IQ with writing speed?

I'm pretty much done citing anything mentioning IQ since it's been so thoroughly 'debunked'.

And I'm at least partly a victim of the "but your IQ is so high - you could do so much!" expectation trap. At least until I learned to let go of other people's expectations and just be myself.

Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#39

What's the better measure of typing speed: full words correct with no typos, or full words typos included? A buddy of mine used some timing app for our typing speeds, you had to backspace repeatedly to retype a word if you misspelled it. I argued that is unrealistic, you can just use spell check or just catch the typos during your editing read through.

> What's the better measure of typing speed Full words correct with no typos. If you want to measure this, you're interested in the combination of reading speed and muscle memory while typing. If you're making typos, your muscle memory is not good. Using a spell checker to automatically fix those words... Well, the number is not comparable, then.

How does ‘muscle memory’ apply to a brain computer interface?

Re: Brain-Computer Interface Smashes Previous Record for Typing Speed

#40
> The fastest of these previous typing-by-brain experiments allowed people to type about 40 characters, or 8 words, per minute.

Ah, so it's previous record for BCI typing speed, not "typing speed" in general. Original headline (on IEEE side) is misleading.

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