Facilitating Text Production in Fourth Graders: Effects of Script-Based Knowledge and Writing Prompts

This study aimed at providing evidence that prior knowledge (semantic relatedness) and its organization (scripted versus not related) prompted either through pictures alone, pictures and associated words, words only have different impacts on several components of text produced by fourth graders. The results showed that the semantic relatedness affected three dependent measures: prompt words recalled, coherence and quality of texts. The nature of the prompts impacted on planning (number of ideas) and translating (number of propositions and length of texts) processes. Findings, instructional applications, limitations, and proposals for future research are discussed.

Generalizability of pause times in sentence production to distinguish between adult writers

Researchers often decide on the number of trials included in an experiment without adhering to an empirical method or framework. This might compromise generalizability and unnecessarily increase participant burden. In this article we want to put forward generalizability theory as a guide for task reduction. We will use a sentence production task to demonstrate how a generalizability and a decision study can help researchers to estimate the minimum number of trials and of items per trial that are necessary to generalize over trials. We obtained writing process data for 116 participants. Each of them completed a sentence production task that had 40 trials. Pause times between and within all words, target nouns and target verbs were logged with the keystroke logging tool ScriptLog. Results demonstrate that generalizability theory can serve as an empirical framework to ensure generalizable measurements on the one hand, and reduce participant burden to a minimum on the other. This finding is particularly valuable for studies with vulnerable target groups, such as participants suffering from aphasia, dyslexia or Alzheimer's disease.

L2 Verbal Fluency and Cognitive Mechanism in Bilinguals: Evidence from Tibetan-Chinese Bilinguals

As a basic indicator of verbal ability, verbal fluency refers to the degree of fluency in the use of language to convey information. The different components of working memory play an important role in verbal fluency. The inhibiting control mechanism takes place during L2 production processing in bilinguals, which may affect their verbal fluency and distinguish them from native speakers. The participants of our study were 90 Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals and 30 native Chinese speakers. The study attempts to investigate the verbal fluency and cognitive mechanism of bilinguals' L2. The present study's results found L2 verbal fluency in Tibetan-Chinese bilinguals is significantly lower than that of native Chinese speakers. L2 verbal fluency has changed under the influence of their mother tongue, mainly manifested as its semantic fluency of L2 relying not only on the visuospatial sketchpad but also the phonological loop. Moreover, the processing of bilinguals' L2 is influenced by the processing mode of L1 in the verbal fluency task.

The Visual Working Memory Demands of Processing Conventional Metaphoric Language

According to the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), conceptual metaphors, such as “Life is a journey,” are used to map the characteristics of abstract domains (e.g., life) onto more accessible concrete domains (e.g., a journey). Uses such as “dead-end job” and “they’re on the right track” are manifestations of this conceptual metaphor. When and how these mappings might be created remains unclear. Bowdle and Gentner’s (2005) career of metaphor hypothesis suggests that metaphors in “X is a Y” form (e.g., “a lawyer is a shark”) undergo a change in the mode of processing as those metaphors transition from novel conceptual pairings to familiar ones. The current study asks whether the associations between conceptually related concepts are accessed while the metaphoric language is processed in working memory (WM) and, if so, whether the role of WM is moderated by familiarity. If processing linguistic applications of conceptual metaphors involves active access of the concrete source domain, processing metaphoric language, like the concrete language it is being mapped onto, should involve activation of concrete representations and recruit more visual WM resources than literal abstract language. Experiment 1 found no difference in the visual WM demands of processing literal language and conventional expressions of conceptual metaphors. Experiment 2 found that novel expressions of conceptual metaphors placed greater demands on visual WM than familiar expressions. Together, these data provide some support for CMT but suggest that familiarity of the linguistic form of the metaphor plays a role in determining processing modality.

Effects of planning strategies on writing dynamics and final texts

Expert writing involves the interaction among three cognitively demanding processes: planning, translating, and revising. To manage the cognitive load brought on by these processes, writers frequently use strategies. Here, we examined the effects of planning strategies on writing dynamics and final texts. Before writing an argumentative text with the triple-task technique, 63 undergraduates were asked either to elaborate an outline with the argumentative structure embedded (structure-based planning condition), to provide a written list of ideas for the text (list-based planning condition), or to do a non-writing-related filler task (no planning condition). Planning showed no effects on the length of the pre-writing pause and cognitive effort, but influenced writing processes occurrences. Compared to participants in the no-planning condition, those in the planning conditions showed a later activation of revising. Moreover, participants in the structure-based condition were mainly focused on translating in the beginning and middle of composition, whereas their peers tended to distribute their attention among all processes. Planning ahead of writing also resulted in texts with longer words, produced at a higher rate. Only the structure-based planning strategy led to an increase in the number of argumentation elements as well as in essays' persuasiveness and overall quality. There was, however, no indication that these improvements in final texts were associated with changes in the dynamics of writing. Overall, the use of structure-based plans seems to be an effective and efficient way of improving undergraduates' argumentative writing.

Language production

Linguistic expressions are produced through a multicomponent multistage process. This article describes the major components of the language-production process and discusses issues of current research focus. General mechanisms of word and sentence production are described. This is followed by discussion of language production in conversation, different modes of production (written production, sign language, monitoring, bilingualism, aphasia, corpus research), and the relationship of language-production mechanisms to other cognitive systems (eye movements, attention, memory, gesture), before ending with concluding thoughts. WIREs Cogn Sci 2010 1 834-844 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Written production in a case of locked-in syndrome with bilateral corticopontic degeneration

Patients in locked-in syndrome show normal or near normal mental abilities that contrast with the limited motor capacity that hinders voluntary communication. However, eye movements and blinking are usually preserved and can be used to establish a communication system. We report an exceptional case of locked-in syndrome. The aetiology was basilar thrombosis consecutive to a cervical manipulation. In addition, brain MRI performed 23 years later showed a ventral pontine stroke with bilateral corticopontic degeneration. In this study the patient was able to produce written output using a chin-controlled Morse system decoded by a computer. A detailed linguistic analysis of text written over 20 years by the patient was carried out. The data demonstrate that improvements in language performance can be observed even in patients with brain lesions in areas associated with high-level cognitive processes. The data show a decrease of typing, grammatical and lexical errors over time, use of less frequent words, and an increase of more complex linguistic structures. This paper adds to previous findings confirming the value of daily practice and rehabilitation to enhance quality of life in this group of patients.

Visual-perceptual-kinesthetic inputs on influencing writing performances in children with handwriting difficulties

This study investigated the role of visual-perceptual input in writing Chinese characters among senior school-aged children who had handwriting difficulties (CHD). The participants were 27 CHD (9-11 years old) and 61 normally developed control. There were three writing conditions: copying, and dictations with or without visual feedback. The motor-free subtests of the Developmental Test of Visual Perception (DTVP-2) were conducted. The CHD group showed significantly slower mean speeds of character production and less legibility of produced characters than the control group in all writing conditions (ps<0.001). There were significant deteriorations in legibility from copying to dictation without visual feedback. Nevertheless, the Group by Condition interaction effect was not statistically significant. Only position in space of DTVP-2 was significantly correlated with the legibility among CHD (r=-0.62, p=0.001). Poor legibility seems to be related to the less-intact spatial representation of the characters in working memory, which can be rectified by viewing the characters during writing. Visual feedback regarding one's own actions in writing can also improve legibility of characters among these children.

Are poor Chinese text comprehenders also poor in written composition?

We studied the performance in three genres of Chinese written composition (narration, exposition, and argumentation) of 158 grade 4, 5, and 6 poor Chinese text comprehenders compared with 156 good Chinese text comprehenders. We examined text comprehension and written composition relationship. Verbal working memory (verbal span working memory and operation span working memory) and different levels of linguistic tasks-morphological sensitivity (morphological compounding and morphological chain), sentence processing (syntax construction and syntax integrity), and text comprehension (narrative and expository texts)-were used to predict separately narrative, expository, and argumentation written compositions in these students. Grade for grade, the good text comprehenders outperformed the poor text comprehenders in all tasks, except for morphological chain. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed differential contribution of the tasks to different genres of writing. In particular, text comprehension made unique contribution to argumentation writing in the poor text comprehenders. Future studies should ask students to read and write parallel passages in the same genre for better comparison and incorporate both instructional and motivational variables.

Developmental and Individual Differences in Chinese Writing

The goal of the present study was to examine the generalizability of a model of the underlying dimensions of written composition across writing systems (Chinese Mandarin vs. English) and level of writing skill. A five-factor model of writing originally developed from analyses of 1st and 4th grade English writing samples was applied to Chinese writing samples obtained from 4th and 7th grade students. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to compare the fits of alternative models of written composition. The results suggest that the five-factor model of written composition generalizes to Chinese writing samples and applies to both less skilled (Grade 4) and more skilled (Grade 7) writing, with differences in factor means between grades that vary in magnitude across factors.

Spoken Persuasive Discourse Abilities of Adolescents With Acquired Brain Injury

Purpose

The aim of this study was to examine the performance of adolescents with acquired brain injury (ABI) during a spoken persuasive discourse task. Persuasive discourse is frequently used in social and academic settings and is of importance in the study of adolescent language.

Method

Participants included 8 adolescents with ABI and 8 peers without ABI who were matched for age, gender, and education. A spoken persuasive discourse task requiring participants to express their opinion on a topic was administered, and the 2 groups were compared on measures of language productivity, syntactic complexity, and language content. In addition, the relationship between working memory and discourse production was explored.

Results

There were no statistically significant group differences on measures of language productivity or syntactic complexity, with the exception of the use of mazes, which was more prevalent in the discourse of the group with ABI. However, there were significant differences in language content, with age-matched peers producing more than twice as many supporting reasons and far fewer tangentially related utterances than the adolescents with ABI.

Conclusions

Persuasive discourse production was affected following ABI. Given the importance of persuasive discourse in social and academic situations, further investigations into factors that influence discourse production in adolescents with ABI are warranted.

Real-time production of arguments and adjuncts in normal and agrammatic speakers

Two eyetracking experiments examined the real-time production of verb arguments and adjuncts in healthy and agrammatic aphasic speakers. Verb argument structure has been suggested to play an important role during grammatical encoding (Bock & Levelt, 1994) and in speech deficits of agrammatic aphasic speakers (Thompson, 2003). However, little is known about how adjuncts are processed during sentence production. The present experiments measured eye movements while speakers were producing sentences with a goal argument (e.g., the mother is applying lotion to the baby) and a beneficiary adjunct phrase (e.g., the mother is choosing lotion for the baby) using a set of computer-displayed written words. Results showed that the sentence production system experiences greater processing cost for producing adjuncts than verb arguments and this distinction is preserved even after brain-damage. In Experiment 1, healthy young speakers showed greater gaze durations and gaze shifts for adjuncts as compared to arguments. The same patterns were found in agrammatic and older speakers in Experiment 2. Interestingly, the three groups of speakers showed different time courses for encoding adjuncts: young speakers showed greater processing cost for adjuncts during speech, consistent with incremental production (Kempen & Hoenkamp, 1987). Older speakers showed this difference both before speech onset and during speech, while aphasic speakers appeared to preplan adjuncts before speech onset. These findings suggest that the degree of incrementality may be affected by speakers' linguistic capacity.

Differential verbal, visual, and spatial working memory in written language production

The contributions of verbal, visual, and spatial working memory to written language production were investigated. Participants composed definitions for nouns while concurrently performing a task which required updating, storing, and retrieving information coded either verbally, visually, or spatially. The present study extended past findings by showing the linguistic encoding of planned conceptual content makes its largest demand on verbal working memory for both low and high frequency nouns. Kellogg, Olive, and Piolat in 2007 found that concrete nouns place substantial demands on visual working memory when imaging the nouns' referents during planning, whereas abstract nouns make no demand. The current study further showed that this pattern was not an artifact of visual working memory being sensitive to manipulation of just any lexical property of the noun prompts. In contrast to past results, writing made a small but detectible demand on spatial working memory.

Verbal, visual, and spatial working memory in written language production

College students wrote definitions of either abstract or concrete nouns in longhand while performing a concurrent working memory (WM) task. They detected either a verbal (syllable), visual (shape), or spatial (location) stimulus and decided whether it matched the last one presented 15-45s earlier. Writing definitions of both noun types elevated the response time to verbal targets above baseline. Such interference was observed for visual targets only when defining concrete nouns and was eliminated entirely with spatial targets. The interference effect for verbal targets was the same whether they were read or heard, implicating phonological storage. The findings suggest that language production requires phonological or verbal WM. Visual WM is selectively engaged when imaging the referents of concrete nouns.

The Importance of Handwriting Speed in Adult Writing

Handwriting speed is important to the quantity and quality of children's essays. This article reviews research on adult essay writing and lecture note taking that extends this finding to adult writers. For both children and adults, research suggests that greater transcription speed increases automaticity of word production, which in turn lessens the burden on working memory (WM) and enables writers to use the limited capacity of WM for the metacognitive processes needed to create good reader-friendly prose. These findings suggest that models of writing, which emphasize the metacognitive components of writing primarily, should be expanded to include transcription (handwriting automaticity and spelling). The article also evaluates the implications of fluent handwriting to WM, given that even the most fluent handwriting can consume some WM resources and recent research and theory has highlighted the importance of WM to quality writing. Finally, the implications of handwriting and WM to assessment and instruction are discussed.