Is Working Memory Involved in the Transcribing and Editing of Texts?

Abstract

Generally, researchers agree that that verbal working memory plays an important role in cognitive processes involved in writing. However, there is disagreement about which cognitive processes make use of working memory. Kellogg has proposed that verbal working memory is involved in translating but not in editing or producing (i.e., typing) text. In this study, the authors used articulatory suppression, a technique that reduces working memory to explore this question. Twenty participants transcribed six texts from one computer window to another, three of the texts with articulatory suppression and three without. When participants were in the articulatory suppression condition, they transcribed significantly more slowly and made significantly more errors than they did in the control condition. Implications for Kellogg’s proposal are discussed.

Review: Smart, Graham (2006). Writing the Economy: Activity, Genre, and Technology in the World of Banking. London: Equinox Publishing

“…The different strategies of either continuously monitoring the written traces on the screen and correcting them immediately if necessary or first working on the entire writing assignment and then editing and correcting may also affect keyboard efficiency. Compared to Hayes and Chenoweth (2006), who report proportions of what they call ''wasted keystrokes'', between 8 and 10 per cent for a copy task (i. e. 90 to 92 per cent keyboard efficiency), our participants show smaller keyboard efficiency for the tasks copying from text (86 per cent) and generating from text (79 per cent). Again, this points to the fact that typing patterns other than mere intra-word speed may not become visible in most typing research because its participants display highly selected proficiency levels rather than typical typing behavior.…”

“…The speed variable ''transition time within words'' shows that all participants could be classified as rather fast typists, e.g., in the framework of Alves et al (2007). However, this only holds in a context of ''lay typists''; about half of our students would not meet the 40 words per minute criterion of the study of Hayes and Chenoweth (2006). Again, this shows that large parts of the existing research do not apply to typical academic writers.…”

“…If, for example, the visual search for the next letter on the keyboard is an attention-demanding process, performance on any cognitively demanding task will decrease when the result of this task is to be conveyed via typing. Thus, Hayes and Chenoweth (2006) show that articulatory suppression (which blocks a part of working memory functions) impairs the speed and accuracy of transcription writing. Note, however, that their study only admitted participants who were able to type at least 40 words per minute, which is a considerable semi-professional pace.…”

Visualizing Revision: Leveraging Student-Generated Between-Draft Diagramming Data in Support of Academic Writing Development

“…Revision is a conscious, ongoing, high-level, cognitively and procedurally demanding part of academic writing (Flower et al 1986;Hayes and Chenoweth 2006;LessardClouston 1995;McCutchen 2000). It consists of metacognitive processes of reconsidering ideas, organization, and wording, and of detecting problems and opportunities (Hayes 2001).…”

“…The fact that revision is a high-level, cognitively and procedurally challenging part of the writing process (Flower et al 1986;Hayes and Chenoweth 2006;Lessard-Clouston 1995;McCutchen 2000) may help explain why students rarely embrace work on a second draft as an opportunity to make substantive changes to their text. Instead, they tend to focus on lexical-level issues-spelling, word choice as well as punctuation-declaring their text complete once those issues have been addressed (Beason 1993;Cho and MacArthur 2010).…”