PROCESS ACTIVATION IN TEXT PRODUCTION
599
ecutes the most recently formulated phrase. A similar slowing the rhythms of low-level motor processes to ac-
procedure is plausible in written output when sufficient commodate high-level processing demands. Similarly,
working memory resources can be allocated to handle Foulin (1995) asked children and adult participants to
both the high- and the low-level processes.
producea sentencewith two clauses. The duration of intra-
The findings reported here are consistent with past re- clause pauses in adults decreased in the second clause,
search suggestingthat motortranscriptiondemands a sub- and the rate of production accelerated at the end of the
stantial degree of available working memory resources in sentence, as the conceptual and linguistic demands
children, leaving little available for high-level processes waned. Similar variations were not observed in children,
(Bourdin & Fayol, 1994; Graham et al., 1997). Further- because motor transcription was demanding and inflex-
more, the findingsare consistentwith McCutchen’s (1996) ible in rate.
suggestion that working memory limitations underlie
children’s failure to engage in high-level processes dur-
ing text production. For example, the knowledge-telling
strategy used by children simplifies the high-level pro-
cesses involved in retrieving an idea and then generating
a sentence to express it (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987).
Adults, in contrast, engage in many cycles of reflective
planning, reading, and editing along with generation.
The task itself is markedly different in children and
adults—in part, at least, because adults have the working
memory resources available for the more complex strat-
egy of knowledge-transforming. Relative to adults, chil-
dren do not read what they have written, edit their texts,
or struggle with sentence construction, local coherence,
and global coherence (McCutchen, 1996). Lack of ca-
pacity for high-level processes is one reason for these
failures.
REFERENCES
Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1987). The psychology of written
composition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Berninger, V. W., & Swanson, H. L. (1994). Modifying Hayes and
Flower’s model of skilled writing to explain beginning and develop-
ing writing. In J. S. Carlson (series ed.) & E. C. Butterfield (vol. ed.),
Advances in cognition and educational practice: Vol. 2. Children’s
writing: Toward a process theory of the development of skilled writ-
ing (pp. 57-81). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Bock, K., & Levelt, W. (1994). Language production: Grammatical
encoding. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguis-
tics (pp. 945-984). New York: Academic Press.
Bourdin, B., & Fayol, M. (1994). Is written languageproductionmore
difficult than oral language production? A working memory ap-
proach. International Journal of Psychology, 29, 591-620.
Brown, J. S., McDonald, J. L., Brown, T. L., & Carr, T. H. (1988).
Adapting to processing demands in discourse production: The case
of handwriting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Per-
ception & Performance, 14, 45-59.
Chanquoy, L., Foulin, J.-N., & Fayol, M. (1990). Temporal manage-
ment of short texts writing by children and adults. CPC/European
Bulletin of Cognitive Psychology, 10, 513-538.
Finally, the fluency of adult writers slowed during
composition, relative to the copy, when standard script
was used. The division of attention between transcrip-
tion and high-level processes forced a reduction in flu- Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. (1980). Individual differences in
working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal
Behavior, 19, 450-466.
Desmette,D.,Hupet, M.,Schelstraete,M. A.,& VanDer Linden,M.
(1995). Adaptation en langue française du “reading span test” de
ency. In contrast, children and adults writing in upper-
case letters composed nearly as fast as they transcribed
prepared text, albeit at a much slower rate overall in both
cases. This finding supports the view that execution and
high-level processes are competing for a common work-
ing memory resource (Bourdin & Fayol, 1994; Kellogg,
2001). It further indicates that the rate of motor tran-
scription in adults slows to accommodate the demands
placed on high-levelprocesses (Brown et al., 1988). The
fluency rate dropped by 6.5 wpm in adultswriting in cur-
sive in adjustingto high-leveldemands but only dropped
by 1.9 wpm in children.
Fayol (1999) has argued that on-line coordination of
writing processes can be achieved in two ways. The first
is to automatize processes, but this may be limited to
low-level processes, as opposed to high-level ones (Mc-
Cutchen, 1988). The second is to adapt the rhythm of
production when problems arise in integrating the de-
mands of effortful processes. For example, Chanquoy,
Foulin, and Fayol (1990) asked 8-year-old children and
adult writers to complete stories under different con-
straints of complexityand predictability.They found that
the adults, but not the children, increased the duration of
their prewriting pauses and between-clause pauses and
slowed slightly their within-clause writing rate when the
events being written about in the story were predictable.
The adults coordinated writing processes, in part, by
Daneman et Carpenter [French adaptation of Daneman and Carpen-
ter’s “Reading Span” test]. L’Année Psychologique, 95, 459-482.
Fayol, M. (1999). Writing: From on-line management problems to
strategies. In M. Torrance & G. Jeffery (Eds.), Cognitive demands of
writing (pp. 13-23). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Flower,L., & Hayes, J. R. (1980). The dynamics of composing: Making
plans and jugglingconstraints. In L. W. Gregg & E. R. Steinberg (Eds.),
Cognitive processes in writing (pp. 31-50). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Foulin, J.-N. (1995). Pauses et débits: Les indicateurs temporels de la
production écrite [Pauses and writing rate: Temporal indexes of writ-
ten composition]. L’Année Psychologique, 95, 483-504.
Graham, S., Berninger, V. W., Abbott, R. D., Abbott, S. P., &
Whitaker, D. (1997). Role of mechanics in composing of elemen-
tary school students: A new methodologicalapproach. Journal of Ed-
ucational Psychology, 89, 170-182.
Hayes, J. R. (1996). A new framework for understanding cognitionand
affect in writing. In C. M. Levy & S. E. Ransdell (Eds.), The science
of writing: Theories, methods, individual differences and applica-
tions (pp. 1-27). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jonides, J., & Smith, E. E. (1997). The architecture of working mem-
ory. In M. D. Rugg (Ed.), Cognitive neuroscience (pp. 243-276).
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Kahneman, D. (1973). Attention and effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Kellogg, R. T. (1988). Attentional overload and writing performance:
Effects of rough draft and outline strategies. Journal of Experimen-
tal Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 14, 355-365.
Kellogg, R. T. (1994). The psychology of writing. New York: Oxford
University Press.