ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the role of three basic factors in children’s written text production. The first is short-term memory loss due to slow rate of writing. The second is interference from the mechanical demands of writing (penmanship, spelling, etc.). The third factor is one suggested by the analyses in the preceding chapter. It is disruption of discourse production due to the lack of external cuing of the kind provided in conversation. Although some evidence of effect is adduced for all three of these factors, the current indications are that the first two factors are less potent than might have been assumed, while the third has been underestimated.
