A Comparison of the Speed and Accuracy of Reading Aloud and Keypunching Digits

An experiment was conducted to compare the relative speed and accuracy of reading digits aloud and keypunching digits. The five subjects used in the experiment had no prior experience in keypunching. These subjects read digits at about twice the speed at which they could keypunch even after several hours of practice. However, the subjects indicated that keypunching was an easier task. Reading errors, as judged by a human listener, were not very different in number from keypunching errors.