Competition for Working Memory among Writing Processes
Abstract
Narrative, descriptive, and persuasive texts were written by college students in longhand or on a word processor. Participants concurrently detected auditory probes cuing them to retrospect about whether they were planning ideas, translating ideas into sentences, or reviewing ideas or text at the moment the probes occurred. Narrative planning and longhand motor execution presumably were heavily practiced, freeing capacity for rapid probe detection. Spare capacity was distributed equally among all 3 processes, judging from probe reaction times, when planning demands were low in the narrative condition. When motor execution demands were low in the longhand condition, however, reviewing benefited more than planning. The results indicate that planning, translating, and reviewing processes in writing compete for a common, general-purpose resource of working memory.
Recommended Citation
Kellogg, R. T. (2001). Competition for Working Memory among Writing Processes. American Journal of Psychology, 114(2), pp. 175-191. University of Illinois Press.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.2307/1423513
Department(s)
Psychological Science
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
0002-9556
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2024 University of Illinois Press, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2001
PubMed ID
11430147
