Cognitive capacity differences among writers

Examined differences between good and poor writers on 6 cognitive-processing tasks. In Exp I, 3 tasks were employed to ascertain differences between 15 good and 15 poor undergraduate writers on recall and manipulation of information: an ordered letters task, an iconic memory task, and a letter reordering task. In Exp II, 3 additional tasks were employed to examine 17 good and 16 poor undergraduate writers' abilities to hold and manipulate larger amounts of information: a word reordering task, a sentence reordering task, and a paragraph assembly task. In both experiments, the results reveal significant differences between good and poor writers' abilities to hold and simultaneously manipulate information. Exp III replicated the results of Exps I and II with 15 good and 14 poor high school writers. It is suggested that the observed differences between good and poor writers can be attributed to differences in elementary information-processing programs. (31 ref)