Tracking the Mind during Writing: Immediacy, Delayed, and Anticipatory Effects on Pauses and Writing Rate.

This study examines the dynamics of cognitive processes during writing. Participants were 5th, 7th and 9th graders ranging in age from 10 to 15 years. They were shown a short silent video composed of clips illustrating conflictual situations between people in school, and were invited to produce a narrative text. Three chronometric measures of word n were analyzed using a Linear Mixed-Effects Model regression procedure: pause duration before word n, pause duration within word n, and writing rate of word n. The predictors were sublexical and lexical properties of word n, i.e., immediacy effects, word n − 1, i.e., delayed effects, and of word n + 1, i.e., anticipatory effects. The writing-rate and the intra-word-pause measures show both immediacy and anticipatory effects. However, the between-word-pause durations show only delayed effects, which has not been reported in previous studies. As far as we know, our study is the first investigation which reveals the occurrence of parallel and serial effects in written text production: preprocessing of word n + 1 occurs when word n is being written, and properties of word n − 1 still exert their influences while the pen has already moved to the next word.