Lee W. Gregg - Cognitive Processes in Writing

PSYCHOLOGY LIBRARY EDITIONS: COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Volume 14

COGNITIVE PROCESSES IN WRITING

COGNITIVE PROCESSES IN WRITING

Edited by

LEE W. GREGG AND ERWIN R. STEINBERG

First published in 1980 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

This edition first published in 2017

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1980 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-138-19163-1 (Set)

ISBN: 978-1-315-54401-4 (Set) (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-64181-5 (Volume 14) (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-63027-4 (Volume 14) (ebk)

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COGNITIVE PROCESSES in WRITING

Edited by

LEE W. GREGG
ERWIN R. STEINBERG

Carnegie-Mellon University

Copyright 1980 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers

365 Broadway

Hillsdale, New Jersey 07642

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Main entry under title:

Cognitive processes in writing.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. WritingPsychological aspects 2. English languageRhetoric. 3. Cognition. I. Gregg, Lee W., II. Steinberg, Erwin R.

BF456.W8C63 808.042019 80-18624

ISBN 0-89859-032-9

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

John R. Hayes and Linda S. Flower

Linda S. Flower and John R. Hayes

Allan Collins and Dedre Gentner

Carl Bereiter

John D. Gould

P. C. Wason

Lee Odell

Erwin R. Steinberg

This book originally began as a set of questions posed by faculty on the campus of Carnegie-Mellon University:

What do we know about how people write?

What do we need to know to help people write better?

In the ensuing discussions among interested members of the Department of Psychology and the Department of English, we arrived at some general propositions:

Discovering how people write is an interdisciplinary problem that probably should involve people from psychology, English, and linguistics.

The necessary research will probably best be undertaken by interdisciplinary teams.

Before we undertake too much research, we ought to find out:

a. what research has already shown, and

b. what research is now going on so that we can plan rationally for the necessary future research.

In May, 1978, therefore, we ran at Carnegie-Mellon an interdisciplinary symposium on Cognitive Processes in Writing; the papers from that symposium are in this volume. When it became clear at the symposium that others who attended were making useful contributions, we invited several of them to prepare chapters for inclusion here.

This book, therefore, presents a reasonably good picture of much of what research has shown about how people write, of what people are currently trying to find out, and of what needs to be done. Not all of the important research, either completed or current, has been included; we do not mean to suggest either that what has been left out is not important or that what we have included is necessarily more important than studies that we have not reported. As we have indicated, this volume reflects our interests and the interests of those who attended our symposium.

We think, however, that the chapters in this book give a fair picture of the kinds of things we know, and we hope that as a result it will prove a useful stimulus for further research on cognitive processes in writing.

In concluding, we want to record here our debt to J. R. Hayes, Linda Flower, Sandra Bond, and Joyce Hannah, without whose help neither the symposium nor this book would have occurred.

LEE W. GREGG

ERWIN R. STEINBERG

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Individual papers in the volume were prepared under the sponsorship of various grants and contracts. The work by Flower and Hayes, , was supported in part by the National Institute of Education under Grant NIE-G-78-0195 and, in part, under Contract NIE-400-78-0043. The research on a process theory of writing by Allan Collins was supported under Contract NIE-400-76-0116. The paper by Carl Bereiter was prepared in connection with an NIE conference on problems in writing. The symposium was supported by a grant from the Buhl Foundation for the design and implementation of a core curriculum in Humanities and Social Sciences.

John R. Hayes
Linda S. Flower

Carnegie-Mellon University

Many have recognized that attention to process is potentially very important for the teaching of writing (Britton, Burgess, Martin, McLeod, & Rosen, 1975; Young, Becker, & Pike, 1970). Unfortunately, relatively few researchers have actually studied writing processes experimentally. Although noteworthy exceptions may be found in the work of Emig (1971), Zollner (1969), and Harding (1963), it is still true, as Britton et al. (1975) say, that there has been very little systematic direct observation of fluent writers at work [].

Cognitive psychologists have developed the technique of protocol analysis as a powerful tool for the identification of psychological processes (Newell & Simon, 1972). Although protocol analysis has most typically been used to identify processes in problem-solving tasks, as we will see, it can be used to identify processes in writing as well.

In this chapter:

We describe the technique of protocol analysis.

We show how it can be used to identify writing processes.

We describe some early results in identifying writing processes that we obtained through its use.

A protocol is a description of the activities, ordered in time, which a subject engages in while performing a task.

A protocol, then, is a description, but not every description of a task performance is a protocol. Often we describe tasks mentioning only their outcomes or goals. We may say, for example, My Great Dane, Spot, convinced me to give him his supper. This description tells us that the dog did one or more things to get food, but it doesnt say what these things were or in what order they occurred. That description, therefore, is not a protocol. The following description is a protocol, however.