Analysing Writing Processes of People with Language, Mental, Cognitive or Physical Disorders

Matrix showing the different characteristics of each of the studies.

Editorial

15 December 2023

Editorial: Analysing writing processes of people with language, mental, cognitive or physical disorders

Luuk Van Waes

Åsa Wengelin

and

Ingrid Henriksson

995 views

0 citations

Editors

Luuk Van Waes

University of Antwerp

Åsa Wengelin

University of Gothenburg

Ingrid Henriksson

Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg

Impact

Original Research

09 May 2023

Written products and writing processes in Swedish deaf and hard of hearing children: an explorative study on the impact of linguistic background

Moa Gärdenfors

and

Victoria Johansson

The small body of research on writing and writing processes in the group of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children has shown that this group struggles more with writing than their hearing peers. This article aims to explore in what ways the DHH group differs from their peers regarding the written product and the writing processes. Participants are all in the age span 10–12 years old and include: (a) 12 DHH children with knowledge of Swedish sign language (Svenskt teckenspråk, STS) as well as spoken Swedish, (b) 10 age-matched hearing children of deaf adults (CODA) who know STS, (c) 14 age-matched hearing peers with no STS knowledge. More specifically we investigate how text length and lexical properties relate to writing processes such as planning (measured through pauses) and revision, and how the background factors of age, gender, hearing and knowledge of STS predict the outcome in product and process. The data consists of picture-elicited narratives collected with keystroke logging. The overall results show that age is a strong predictor for writing fluency, longer texts and more sophisticated lexicon for all the children. This confirms theories on writing development which stress that when children have automatized basic low-level processes such as transcription and spelling, this will free up cognitive space for engaging in high-level processes, such as planning and revision—which in turn will result in more mature texts. What characterizes the DHH group is slower writing fluency, higher lexical density, due to omitted function words, and extensive revisions (both deletions and insertions) on word level and below. One explanation for the last finding is that limitations in the auditory input lead to more uncertainty regarding correct and appropriate lexical choices, as well as spelling. The article contributes with more specific knowledge on what is challenging during writing for DHH children with knowledge of STS and spoken Swedish in middle school, in the developmental stage when basic writing skills are established.

2,697 views

4 citations

Original Research

23 May 2023

Handwriting processes when spelling morphologically complex words in children with and without Developmental Language Disorder

Sarah Critten

, 5 more and

Kirsty Walter

2,382 views

2 citations

Original Research

09 October 2023

Reactivity of the triple task on writing processes and product in adults with dyslexia

Marina Olujić Tomazin

, 1 more and

Rui A. Alves

1,688 views

1 citations

Opinion

05 December 2023

Bridging the writing gap in studying language related disorders: the process and the product

Åsa Wengelin

, 1 more and

Luuk Van Waes

1,246 views

0 citations

Interaction plots (condition and group) of the process measures. CI = 95%. 1 = Spell, 2 = Ref. (A) Proportion of total revisions, (B) proportion of total surface revisions, (C) proportion of wording revisions, (D) proportion of spelling revisions, (E) proportion of STT-error revisions (boxplot of group differences), (F) proportion of meaning-related revisions. Note the scale differences.

Original Research

23 March 2023

Revisions in written composition: Introducing speech-to-text to children with reading and writing difficulties

Sanna Kraft

The ability to perform revisions targeting the content of the text is important for text quality improvement, and it is hypothesized that lower-level transcription processes need to be automatized in order to free up capacity for higher-level processes such as revision. However, for people with reading and writing difficulties due to underlying difficulties with decoding and spelling, the transcription process is rarely automatized because of their troubles with spelling. One possible way to circumvent spelling difficulties, and possibly gaining capacity for higher level processes such as revision, is to write using speech-to-text (STT). This study investigates the revisions performed when children with reading and writing difficulties (n = 16), and a reference group without such difficulties (n = 12), compose text using STT and using a keyboard. More specifically, the study investigates whether, and if so how, revisions at various levels, errors left in the final text product, and text quality differ between conditions and between groups. The compositions were logged using keystroke logging (keyboard) and audio- and screen-recording (STT). The level of revisions were manually coded. The results showed that children with reading and writing difficulties gain more from composing with STT compared to keyboard than the reference group. They leave fewer errors in their final text product when composing by means of STT, even though they need to engage more in the correction of surface errors because of the large number of STT errors. Despite the numerous STT errors, neither the proportion of meaning-related revisions nor text quality decreased in composing with STT (for either of the groups). Taken together, the results suggest, albeit not emphatically, that STT may be appropriate as a facilitatory tool for children with reading and writing difficulties. However, more research is needed to investigate instruction that addresses strategies for STT transcription and highlights the shortcomings of the tool in the target language, and also focuses specifically on higher-level aspects of composition such as planning or revising, in order to gain further knowledge about the feasibility of using STT as a means of composition for children who struggle with writing, and its possible effects over time.

2,459 views

6 citations

Original Research

06 January 2023

In a split second: Handwriting pauses in typical and struggling writers

Mariona Pascual

, 1 more and

Naymé Salas

Introduction: A two-second threshold has been typically used when analyzing the writing processes. However, there is only a weak empirical basis to claim that specific average numbers and durations of pauses may be associated with specific writing processes. We focused on handwriting execution pauses, because immature writers are known to struggle with transcription skills. We aimed to provide an evidence-based account of the average number and duration of handwriting pauses in the mid-Primary grades and to identify process-level markers of writing difficulties.

Methods: Eighty 3rd and 5th graders, with and without writing difficulties, participated in the study. We examined pauses in a handwriting-only task, to be able to isolate those which could only be attributed to handwriting processes. Letter features were considered, as well as children’s handwriting fluency level.

Results: The average duration of handwriting pauses was around 400ms, in line with assumptions that transcription pauses would fall under the 2,000ms threshold. We found that 3rd graders made more and longer pauses than 5th graders. Struggling writers made a similar number of pauses across grades than typically-developing children, although they were significantly longer, even after controlling for the effect of handwriting fluency.

Discussion: Our findings provide an evidence-based account of the duration of handwriting pauses. They also suggest that children need fewer and shorter handwriting pauses as they progress in automatizing transcription. However, some young writers struggle with letter formation even after 3 to 5 years of instruction.

2,652 views

5 citations

Original Research

11 July 2022

Cognitive Writing Process Characteristics in Alzheimer’s Disease

Catherine Meulemans

, 3 more and

Sven De Maeyer

In this article, we explore if the observation of writing behavior can assist in the screening and follow-up of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease (AD). To this end, we examined the extent to which overall writing process measures and pausing behavior during writing differed between 15 cognitively impaired patients and 15 age- and gender-matched healthy controls. Participants completed two typed picture description tasks that were registered with Inputlog, a keystroke logging program that captures keyboard activity during text production. The following variables were analyzed with mixed-effects models: time on task; number of characters, pauses and Pause-bursts per minute; proportion of pause time; duration of Pause-bursts; and pause time between words. For pause time between words, also the effect of pauses preceding specific word categories was analyzed. Results showed a main effect of group on all variables. In addition, for pause time between words a main effect of part-of-speech was found as well. Results indicate that writing process analysis can possibly serve as a supplementary tool for the screening and follow-up of AD.

2,912 views

3 citations