Mazerolle, E. 1 & Marchand, Y. 1, 2
1 Department of Psychology. Dalhousie University. Halifax, Canada.
2 Faculty of Computer Science. Dalhousie University. Halifax, Canada.
Research into typing patterns has broad applications in both psycholinguistics and biometrics (i.e., improving password security via each user’s unique typing patterns). We present a new software package, TypingSuite, which can be used for presenting visual and auditory stimuli, collecting typing data, and summarizing and analyzing the data. TypingSuite is an easy to use Java-based software package that is platform-independent and open-source. To validate TypingSuite as a beneficial tool for researchers interested in keystroke dynamics, we conducted a two-fold study with ten participants. First, a behavioral experiment based on single word typing replicated two well-known findings in typing research, namely the lexicality and the frequency effects. Our results confirmed indeed that TypingSuite could be used to demonstrate that words are typed faster than pseudowords, and that high frequency words are typed faster than low frequency words. The second aspect of the study focused to biometrics and showed that it is possible, using an existing computational approach based on creating user profiles using a pattern classification algorithm on trigraph latency data (i.e., duration of three keystrokes) to distinguish individual typing patterns. Finally, TypingSuite allows quickly implementing an experiment and collecting and analyzing data within a single software package. Due to its simplicity and practicality, we believe that it could also be an excellent choice as an educational tool (e.g., for undergraduate courses in experimental methods).