Quote:
|
Originally Posted by dda
They found that the time almost doubled if another shopper was waiting on the spot. They weren't sure why this happened but felt it might have something to do with a primal territoriality in many humans.
|
To echo some of the sentiments in this thread :
I consider myself an adequate typist. I have used a QWERTY keyboard since the age of five or six, and while I am certainly not a professional typist, I can achieve a reasonable speed/accuracy rate most of the time. But if someone stands over me, I can barely type at all. My accuracy rate plunges dramatically, and I lose all track of what I am doing. If constructing a database query (a common part of my job) I will mistype SELECT or even FROM four or five times within a short statement.
The cause of this does not seem to be distraction but rather
excess concentration. Maybe a different part of my brain takes over, but either way, I spaz it up. And so to avoid errors I have to slow right down, as in a quarter or a fifth of my average speed.
I have never driven a car but it seems possible that people would tend to drive more deliberately if they thought they were being watched (by a stranger) or in an usual fashion.
That could all be bollocks though.