ABSTRACT

The challenge of developing an adequate cognitive theory of writing is to describe how the various inputs into the writing system that constitute the information available to the writer are processed to produce coherent text. This information comes in, broadly, four varieties: topic and rhetorical knowledge represented in the writer’s long-term memory, a statement of the writing task, written or pictorial reference materials (optionally), and the text itself as it emerges on the page or screen (the “text produced so far”). This last-the use that the writer makes of their own emerging text during text production-is the focus of this chapter. Our purpose is to argue studying writers’ eye movements is likely to provide important insights into the complex mental processes that underlie writing. As things stand, there is little hard evidence to support this case: With the exception of two methods-focused papers (Alamargot, Chesnet, Dansac, & Ros, 2006; Wengelin et al., in press) we know of no journal-published literature exploring where writers look in the text that they are composing. This is in stark contrast to the extensive literature exploring readers’ eye movements (reviewed, for example, by Rayner, 1998). The bulk of this chapter is taken up with describing and discussing a range of different kinds of eye-movement behavior that we have observed in our research. This draws on pilot work conducted by Torrance and coworkers at Staffordshire University, United Kingdom and more developed studies by Wengelin and co-workers at Lund University in Sweden. Our intention is to whet readers’ appetite for this kind of research rather than to discuss findings in detail (which would make for a very long chapter) or to draw firm conclusions about underlying cognitive mechanisms (which would be premature). First, however, we briefly describe the methods that we use to collect these data.