Chapter 49

Chapter 49
“A New Framework for Understanding Cognition and Affect in Writing”

The author, John R. Hayes, presents a new framework of writing that will be useful for interpreting a wider range of writing activities, one that he hopes improves the 1980 Hayes-Flower model.

• In short, the 1980 model had tree major components: 1) task environment; external factors that influenced the writing task, 2) cognitive processes; planning, translating or text generation, and revision, 3) writer’s long-term memory; knowledge of topic, audience, and genre.

• The new model contains two major components, the Task Environment and the Individual.

The Task Environment: Social Environment and Physical Environment

The Social Environment:

• Audience: We write in accordance to our audience, whether they are friends or strangers. Culture itself, through past writers, shape our words, images and forms. Cultural differences influence writing, as does a writer’s immediate social surrounding.

• Collaborators: Collaborative writing in schools as a method of teaching writing skills. New research indicates that this type of experience can lead to improved individual writing performances. Within the workplace, many texts are produced by work groups. The output depends on both the makeup of the group itself and the skills of the individuals themselves.

The Physical Environment:

• The Text So Far: Writers reread to help shape or modify what they write next or have written. Writing modifies its own task environment.

• The Composing Medium: Studies indicate the ‘medium’ effects the writing processes such as planning and editing. Results indicated both pros and cons for pen/paper as compared to a word processor and that one medium is not better than the other, but that the medium does influence writing processes.

The Individual: Working Memory Motivation/Affect, Cognitive Processes, and Long-
Term Memory

Working Memory: Central importance in the writing activity

• Hayes draws heavily on Baddeley’s general model of working memory. Baddeley describes working memory as a limited resource that is used for storing information and carrying out cognitive processes. This memory consists of a central executive (tasks like mental arithmetic, logical reasoning, semantic verification, and controls functions like retrieving information from long-term memory and managing tasks not fully automated) together with two specialized memories plus an added memory by Hayes-

o Phonological loop- stores phonologically coded information, like an inner voice that continually repeats information to be retained (i.e., telephone numbers)
o Sketchpad- stores visually or spatially coded information
o Semantic memory- Hayes adds this to Baddeley’s model as useful in describing text generation

Motivation: Following Gestalt, Hayes writes of activity being goal directed and discusses four areas that are important for writing

• Goals- usually, activities are characterized as means-end analysis with a single dominant goal, however, in writing, writers have more than one goal and the text will be shaped by the writer’s need to achieve a balance among competing goals.

• Predispositions- an individual’s beliefs about writing, influence motivation. If students think that writing is a gift and fail, they may form anxiety and a negative disposition therefore, avoids writing activities.

• Beliefs and Attitudes- If there is difficulty, students tend to blame themselves. However, there is some research that indicates that the act of writing about stress-related topics can have important positive emotional consequences.

• Cost-Benefit Estimates- motivation can influence strategy selection and can be view as shaping the course of action by selecting an activity that is least costly or least likely to lead to error. Changes in the task environment can also have impacts on the costs.

Cognitive Processes:

• Text interpretation- internal representations from linguistic and graphic inputs from reading, listening, and scanning graphics.

• Reflection- internal representations to produce other internal representations through problem solving, decision making, and inferencing.

o Problem solving- putting together a series of steps to reach a goal. Student writers are often asked to do writing yet do not have a fully adequate task schema requiring them to rely on their general problem solving and decision making skills to complete the task.
o Decision making- evaluation of alternatives, writer uses gap-filling decisions in tasks that have ill- defined problems, especially when creating first drafts. During revisions, the writer must decide on adequacy based on a variety of dimensions (diction, tone, clarity, effect on audience).
o Inferencing- process in which new information s derived from old. Authors make inferences about the knowledge and interests of their audiences, readers may draw inferences that are idiosyncratic and consequential and is referred to as the phenomenon of ‘elaboration’.

• Text production- internal representations from context of the task environment and produces written, spoken, or graphic output. Sentence construction is considered. Experienced writers and language users have a reduction in the amount of memory required for constructing sentence parts from content and will write longer sentences.