Individual differences in writing: Implications of translating fluency.

This study provides theoretical detail for the model of writing proposed by J. R. Hayes and L. S. Flower (1980), particularly in relation to (a) subcomponents of the translating process, specifically the processes of sentence generation and lexical retrieval, and (b) processing constraints imposed by working memory limitations. In 2 experiments the components of the translating process were examined in elementary and middle-school students identified as either skilled or less skilled writers. Skilled writers showed more fluent sentence-generation processes than did less skilled writers; this was revealed in their better performance on reading span and speaking span tasks. Skilled writers were also faster and more accurate than less skilled writers in a lexical decision task, thus indicating that lexical retrieval is more fluent for skilled writers