Largy Pierre, Dédéyan Alexandra, Hupet Michel
PSY. CO (E. A. 1780), Université de Rouen, France.
Br J Educ Psychol. 2004 Dec;74(Pt 4):533-50. doi: 10.1348/0007099042376382.
Writing is a complex activity involving various cognitive processes in the planning, the transcription and the revision of written texts. The present study focused on the revision of written texts within a developmental approach.
The study aimed to examine whether children and adults use different procedures to detect and revise erroneous grammatical agreements. It was predicted that children would use a slow algorithmic procedure while adults would use a fast automatized procedure.
One hundred and twenty participants from 5th grade to undergraduate levels (24 per level) participated in the study.
The participants were asked to decide as quickly as possible whether a visually presented sentence had any agreement error. The French experimental sentences were of the type 'The N1 of the N2 + Verb', in which N2 was either a plausible subject of the following verb (e. g., The guard of the prisoners watches) or an implausible subject (e. g., The guard of the safes watches). Correctness and latency of the responses were recorded.
The main results showed that only the younger participants were affected by the subject-role plausibility of N2, and that there was no difference in response latency between their correct and incorrect responses. These observations support the hypothesis that the younger participants systematically apply a time-consuming algorithmic procedure to verify the agreement; since one step of this procedure consists in searching for the subject of the verb, these participants were frequently misled by the subject-role plausibility of N2. On the contrary, the older participants were not affected by the plausibility of N2, but were frequently misled by erroneous agreements between N2 and the verb. These observations support the view that these older participants use a fast decision strategy based on the co-occurrence of formal indices. Their correct answers, however, were slower than their incorrect ones; this suggests that they also sometimes use a time-consuming controlled procedure.
The study shows that along with the acquisition of writing expertise, the revising activity itself is progressively facilitated and gradually automatized by substituting a fast direct decision strategy for a slow and laborious use of revision rules.
写作是一项复杂的活动，在书面文本的规划、抄写和修改过程中涉及各种认知过程。本研究采用发展性方法聚焦于书面文本的修改。
该研究旨在考察儿童和成人是否使用不同的程序来检测和修改错误的语法一致性。预计儿童会使用缓慢的算法程序，而成人会使用快速的自动化程序。
120名参与者，从五年级到本科水平（每个水平24人）参与了该研究。
要求参与者尽快判断视觉呈现的句子是否存在一致性错误。法语实验句子类型为“The N1 of the N2 + 动词”，其中N2要么是后续动词的合理主语（例如，The guard of the prisoners watches），要么是不合理主语（例如，The guard of the safes watches）。记录回答的正确性和反应时间。
主要结果表明，只有较年轻的参与者受到N2主语角色合理性的影响，并且他们正确和错误回答之间的反应时间没有差异。这些观察结果支持这样的假设，即较年轻的参与者系统地应用耗时的算法程序来验证一致性；由于该程序的一个步骤包括寻找动词的主语，这些参与者经常被N2的主语角色合理性误导。相反，年龄较大的参与者不受N2合理性的影响，但经常被N2与动词之间的错误一致性误导。这些观察结果支持这样的观点，即这些年龄较大的参与者使用基于形式指标共现的快速决策策略。然而，他们的正确答案比错误答案慢；这表明他们有时也使用耗时的控制程序。
该研究表明，随着写作专业技能的获得，修改活动本身通过用快速直接的决策策略替代缓慢而费力地使用修改规则而逐渐得到促进并逐渐自动化。
