The name is absent

Writing, working memory and dual-TASK

increases.

The previous findings show that the triple-task
has provided new data about invariant functional
characteristics of writing. Some general features of
the writing processes have been described. However,
one important issue that has to be addressed in
writing research concerns the way writers adapt their
writing strategies to different situations of
composition and whether their level of knowledge,
their skills, their working memory capacity, and so
on, affect these strategies (see Table 1). In this
perspective, in their review, Olive Kellogg and
Piolat (2001; Piolat & Olive, 2000) have identified
three groups of factors that seem to affect the writing
processes in different ways. First, it appears that
processing demands of the writing processes are
mainly affected by writers individual differences. In
particular, a high availability of knowledge of the
writer about the topic of the text induces a lower
cognitive effort (see also Kellogg, 2001). Second,
activation of the writing processes, and especially
that of planning and of revision, is influenced by
situation-specific factors. In other words, the
temporal organization of these processes is
principally affected by the way writers organize their
composition. Finally, writer's linguistic skill and
the medium of production interacts have
repercussions on both the activation of the writing
processes and on their processing demands.

The dynamic of writing, namely how the writing
processes are activated was also explored by Levy
and Ransdell (1995) who studied how writers shift
between the various writing processes, in other
words, the recursivity of writing. They calculated
the frequencies of transition between the different
writing processes (i.e., the frequency of all the
possible and actual shifts between processes). They
shown that each writer preferably alternates between
some specific writing processes, and that these
individual patterns of transition between the writing
processes are stable in different phases of a writing
session. Moreover, because their participants
composed different texts during different writing
sessions, they were able to study whether writers
apply one or several writing strategies. Surprisingly,
they observed that each writer uses the same strategy
in all the different writing sessions. The great intra-
individual stability of these patterns and the inter-
individual differences in terms of processes
transitions lead them to call these writers-specific
strategies of management of writing the "writing
signatures". With this method, Levy and Ransdell
(1995) were thus able to elicit individual differences
in terms of management of the dynamic of writing.
Unfortunately, how these 'writing signatures' are
affected by writers- and situation-specific factors has
still not been addressed.

Table1

Summary of effects of writers- and situation-specific factors on processing demands and activation of the
writing processes.

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