Past, Present, and Future Contributions of Cognitive Writing Research to Cognitive Psychology - Tapa dura

"Those who teach the art of writing and those who desire to improve their own writing skills will find this volume to be a valuable resource. This anthology of essays, written by a diverse group of international scholars, summarizes recent research on the psychological factors involved in the writing process and contains constructive suggestions on how to enhance writing abilities in the classroom. Teachers and researchers in the field of writing will find this book extremely useful in their work."- Richard Kellogg, Ph.D., Professor Emeritas, SUNY College of Technology, USA

"The field of writing research, as represented by cognitive psychology, is still relatively young, particularly when compared with the parallel field of research on reading. One of the real strengths of this book is the way in which it will map the territory historically, and provide a coherent overview of how writing research has developed. It will illustrate in a single volume how programmatic research has cumulatively developed our understanding of writing."  - Debra Myhill, Ph.D., University of Exeter, United Kingdom

"I think that this book will certainly raise a lot of interest from the writing research community. The editor managed to bring together a large group of leading researchers in the field, and the fact that the book is a tribute to three famous pioneers in the domain of writing research certainly adds an extra value to this collection of research papers." - Luuk Van Waes, Ph.D., University of Antwerpen, Belgium

This volume tells the story of research on the cognitive processes of writing―from the perspectives of the early pioneers, the contemporary contributors, and visions of the future for the field.

Writing processes yield important insights into human cognition, and is increasingly becoming a mainstream topic of investigation in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Technological advances have made it possible to study cognitive writing processes as writing unfolds in real time. This book provides an introduction to these technologies.

The first part of the volume provides the historical context for the significance of writing research for contemporary cognitive psychology and honors the pioneers in cognitive and social-cognitive research in this field. The book then explores the rapidly expanding work on the social foundations of cognitive processes in writing and considers not only gender differences but also gender similarities in writing. The third part presents a lifespan view of writing in early and middle childhood, adolescence, higher education, and the world of work. There follows an examination of the relationships of language processes –at the word, sentence, and text levels―to the cognitive processes in writing. Part V covers representative research on the cognitive processes of writing―translation and reviewing and revision―and the working memory mechanisms that support those processes. A review of the current technologies used to study these cognitive processes on-line as they happen in real time is provided. Part VII provides an introduction to the emerging new field of the cognitive neuroscience of writing made possible by the rapidly evolving brain imaging technologies, which are interpretable in reference to paradigms in cognitive psychology of writing. The final section of the book offers visions of the future of writing research from the perspective of contemporary leaders in writing research.