Typing errors as a diagnostic tool
Can typing errors tell us about neurological disorders?
First, a disclaimer. This is pure speculation, but seems plausible to me.
I've noticed that I tend to make the same kinds of mistakes when I'm typing something. My commonest mistake is probably a transposition, where letters just come out in the wrong order - "prnit" instead of "print" is one of my favourites. Transfer of letter doubling is another, where a double letter followed by a single letter is instead rendered the other way around - "ateention" instead of "attention".
These kinds of errors are characteristic, and are presumably linked to my mental processes and physical condition. Over time, it should be possible to gather information about the types of words I spell incorrectly, and how.
Gathering these data would require a key logger, so that I can see all the corrections that I have made. Recording the words that I backspace into, together with what they become afterwards, would give me a list of words I often (that "often" had a missing "t" that I had to correct) misspell, suitable for analysis.
If this suddenly changes, such as the appearance of tripppled letters, then this marks a change in my state. Does this have any diagnostic utility?
I don't know, but it might be interesting to find out.