ABSTRACT
As initially noted by Flower and Hayes (1980), writers’ cognitive effort is so high that they may find themselves in mental overload (Kellogg, 1987, 1994; Piolat, Olive, & Kellogg, 2005). This overload is mainly due to the large demands that the writing processes place on the cognitive system (for reviews, see Kellogg, 2008; Kellogg & Raulerson, 2007; Olive, Kellogg, & Piolat, 2002). In other words, the capacity limitation of working memory, which supports cognitive processes, may be reached when composing a text. This relationship between working memory and writing is now well documented (Gathercole & Alloway, 2008; Gathercole & Pickering, 2000a, 2000b; McCutchen, 2000; Olive, 2004; Swanson & Berninger, 1996a, 1996b).
