When typing, driving a gear-shift car or using a word processor to edit a text, we perform a complex series of tasks very quickly and efficiently, without having to think about the various components and subcomponents of the action involved; sometimes we are even unable to think of them explicitly, and therefore we may have trouble visualising the keyboard or explaining to somebody else how to use a piece of software, even though - or rather just because - we use the keyboard or the software with great ease.

Initially, though, we may have found typing, driving a gear-stick car or using a spreadsheet to be slow, tricky and tiring. The automaticity, that is the speed and ease with which we ultimately carry out these tasks, is the result of a slow process we call automatisation.

Once this process has run its course, the chain of actions involved in automatized tasks can even become hard to suppress, as we experience when forced to shift from a querty to an azerty keyboard, from a gear-shift to an automatic car, or from one kind of accounting software to another. [...]

The ultimate example of automaticity is probably our ability to use language… (DeKeyser, 2001: 125)

DeKeyser describes the initial stages of skill learning as 'slow, tricky and tiring'. According to McLaughlin et al (1983) this is because the initial stages of skill acquisition require controlled processing of information, ie the brain has to pay conscious attention to lots of bits of new information in order to try to organize and retain them.

As we practise, we move to more automatic processing. Our brains no longer have to devote conscious attention to the individual bits of information and behaviours that make up the skill. Somehow we manage to compress the information as we become more familiar with it: our brain's representation of it becomes more organized. As lower-order subskills are thus 'automatized', so our conscious attention is freed up. In principle, this should allow us to focus on higher-order aspects of the task such as more careful monitoring and adapting to a wider range of goals.