Two experiments examined whether text quality is related to online management of the writing processes. Experiment 1 focused on the relationship between online management and text quality in narrative and argumentative texts. Experiment 2 investigated how this relationship might be affected by a goal emphasizing text quality. In both experiments, psychology students were instructed to think aloud while composing their tex:s. Reaction times to auditory probes were also collected to reflect writers' cognitive effort. Two sets of variables were measured: general temporal indicators (fluency, prewriting pause) and online management of writing processes (number, mean length of episodes). Finally, text quality was assessed. As expected, results conflrmed that narrative and argumentative texts are composed using different su-ategies. Students also composed better texts when a quality-based goal had been set. The main reliable indicator of text quality was an increase of the prewriting pause and of planning processes. These findings indicate that writers tailor their writing behavior to match the type and quality of the text they are asked to produce. These results are discussed in the light of interventions and recommendaüons in the classroom.

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Boolean systems still constitute most of the installed base of online public access catalogues (OPACs) in the French universities even if many studies have shown that Boolean operators are not frequently used by 'non-librarian' users (by contrast with professional librarians). The first study examined the use of Boolean operators by French university students; In the second study, elaborated to evaluate the impact of information search expertise on this use, Boolean operators are explicitly presented and participants were explicitly invited to use them. We assumed that university students would not frequently use the operators in searching, and that even if they were explicitly invited to make use of them. Results obtained with the first study based on transaction logs analyses confirmed that French university students did not frequently use Boolean operators. The impact of information search expertise, analysed in the second study, compared three levels of expertise: Novice (university students), intermediate (future professional librarians), and expert (professional librarians). Results showed that, even if the three groups were invited to use Boolean operators, this use increased significantly with the level of information search expertise. University students, if they manage procedural functions of connectives in natural language, do not always manage the whole set of procedural functions carried by such connectives when used in the documentary language. So, the relevance of presenting explicit Boolean operators in the OPACs when users are 'non-librarians' is questioned.

The authors suggest that writing should be conceived of not only as a verbal activity but also as a visuospatial activity, in which writers process and construct visuospatial mental representations. After briefly describing research on visuospatial cognition, they look at how cognitive researchers have investigated the visuospatial dimension of the mental representations and processes engaged in writing. First, they show how Hayes's research integrated the visuospatial dimension of writing. Second, they describe how the written trace can serve as a visual resource. Third, they focus on the visuospatial processes involved in constructing an overall representation of the text and its physical layout. Finally, they review findings on the visuospatial demands that planning places on working memory. All the data and theories presented in this article support the idea that writing is indeed a visuospatial activity. Keywords writing, visual and spatial processes, text representation, planning, working memory No one would argue with the fact that writing a text is a linguistic activity: Writers must turn their communicative intentions into clear, organized, and coherent language. However, this linguistic dimension should not be allowed to overshadow the fact that composing a text is also a visuospatial activity.