Simulating Errors in Touchscreen Typing

2025-02-05

AI Summary

Touchscreen typing errors—specifically slips, lapses, and misjudgments—arise from cognitive mechanisms and manifest as insertions, omissions, substitutions, and transpositions. Prior models focus narrowly on motor slips, neglecting higher-level cognitive error detection and correction. Method: We propose Typoist, the first cognitive modeling framework grounded in supervisory control theory. It jointly simulates eye movements and finger kinematics while dynamically allocating cognitive resources to detect and correct multi-source errors. Using human factors–informed parameterization, it explicitly links perceptual-motor constraints and cognitive load to observable typing behaviors. Contribution/Results: Typoist enables interpretable, quantitative prediction of error types, frequencies, and correction strategies. It advances the theoretical foundation and computational toolkit for designing and evaluating inclusive text-entry systems across the full spectrum of user abilities.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Simulating Human Behavior
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Model-Based Reasoning
• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Cost models of using LLMs in production systems
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

Empirical evidence shows that typing on touchscreen devices is prone to errors and that correcting them poses a major detriment to users' performance. Design of text entry systems that better serve users, across their broad capability range, necessitates understanding the cognitive mechanisms that underpin these errors. However, prior models of typing cover only motor slips. The paper reports on extending the scope of computational modeling of typing to cover the cognitive mechanisms behind the three main types of error: slips (inaccurate execution), lapses (forgetting), and mistakes (incorrect knowledge). Given a phrase, a keyboard, and user parameters, Typoist simulates eye and finger movements while making human-like insertion, omission, substitution, and transposition errors. Its main technical contribution is the formulation of a supervisory control problem wherein the controller allocates cognitive resources to detect and fix errors generated by the various mechanisms. The model generates predictions of typing performance that can inform design, for better text entry systems.

Problem

• Simulating cognitive typing errors
• Improving touchscreen text entry
• Modeling error detection and correction

Innovation

• Simulates cognitive typing errors
• Formulates supervisory control problem
• Predicts typing performance for design