Writing and revising persuasive documents: Cognitive demands.

Abstract

In two experiments, college students wrote preliminary and final drafts of a persuasive document. In Experiment 1, the need for writers to comply with mechanics (i.e., punctuation and spelling), to form complete sentences, and to sequence their ideas, respectively, were eliminated one at a time from preliminary-draft formats. The elimination of sentence-formation and sequence operations produced corresponding increments in persuasive argument production. In Experiment 2, writers with average verbal ability benefited more from the elimination of these structure operations than did writers with low verbal ability. When allowed to choose freely their typical preliminary-draft format, writers with average verbal ability usually selected proposition-based formats (e.g., lists, outlines, and diagrams) that dispensed with the need for structure operations. Writers with average verbal ability also produced more sentences, more arguments per sentence, and fewer mechanics errors than did writers with low verbal ability. In both experiments, preliminary-draft arguments that were transferred during revision constituted the majority of finaldraft arguments; comparatively few new arguments were constructed during revision.

Examining the transcription-writing link: Effects of handwriting fluency and spelling accuracy on writing performance via planning and translating in middle grades

“…Hayes and Berninger (2010) found that children in Grades 2, 4 and 6 produced more ideas in a dictation task, which has no transcription requirements, than in a similar writing task. Moreover, Glynn, Britton, Muth, and Dogan (1982) found that college students instructed to ignore punctuation and spelling during planning produced more arguments than those instructed to attend to these mechanical aspects.…”

Write between the lines: Electronic outlining and the organization of text ideas

“…Most studies show that using an outline strategy positively impacts writing performance and leads to increased text quality (Erkens, Kanselaar, Prangsma, & Jaspers, 2002;Galbraith et al, 2005;Glynn, Britton, Muth, & Dogan, 1982;Kellogg, 1987Kellogg, , 1988Kellogg, , 1990Kozma, 1991). In addition, outlining may decrease mental effort expended during writing.…”

“…Glynn et al, 1982). The writing tasks were given by means of a written instruction which was equivalent for the two conditions (i.e., with and without outline tool) except for the specific requirement to use the outline tool.…”

SCRIPTKELL: A tool for measuring cognitive effort and time processing in writing and other complex cognitive activities

“…In such cases, the participant may have only a small margin in allocating his or her resources to each of the three tasks and does so on the basis ofa subjective evaluation of the experimenter's demands (cf. the notion of "cognitive balance" in Glynn, Britton, Muth, & Dogan, 1982).…”