The Pause Research During Writing In Pupils

Writing is the basic human skills, and also one of the most complex cognitive activities human beings could be accomplished, which including memory, language, thought and other complex cognitive functions. Pause in the process of writing is a common phenomenon, accounting for a significant part of the writing process. Pausing in the language production has usually be understood as the beginning of psychological organization, problem solving, or a cognitive unit, and it is the important traces of cognitive activities which can be observed in writing process, so the pausing research has the important position in the language production. The pause research during writing not only reflects the writing psychological research based process-orientation, but also contributes to reveal the potential cognitive processing behind the writing process.This study's subjects were pupils in fifth-grade. This study included two research (four experiments), and investigated the pause behavior and potential cognitive processes in the process of narrative writing by pupils. Research 1 contained three experiments, which purpose was to investigate the cognitive demand and specific cognitive process in pausing and motor execution through the double-task paradigm and the triple-task technique. Experiment 1 was the pre-experiment, aimed at setting the critical point to distinguish the mechanical pause and the pause for high level cognitive processing in Chinese writing. Experiment 2 used the double-task paradigm to investigate whether the high-level process (planning, translating and revising) can be activated with the low-level motor execution at the same time. Further, Experiment 3 explored the cognitive processes during pausing and motor execution by the triple-task technique. Research 2 aimed to analyze the pausing-related parameters during the narrative writing by fifth graders, and to compare the various relevant parameters on writing process between the high-level and low-level writers, by analyzing the videos of writing process.This study got the following conclusions:(1) The pausing critical value for narrative writing by the fifth-graders is 1.5 s. The pause which less than 1.5 s is due to writing itself belongs to the mechanical pause, and the pause exceed 1.5 s is by high-level cognitive processes caused.(2) The triple-task technique can be applied in research on Chinese writing. The interference the auditory detection task and Verbal Protocols to the writing task is not obvious.(3) The degree of writing automation in fifth-graders is not very high, but it can be achieved that high- and low- level cognitive processes be activated simultaneously in writing.(4) The cognitive demand of planning and revising is greater than translating's.(5) In narrative writing,5th-grade children write 23.66 words each minute, and the pausing time occupied the 33.82% of the whole writing process. They need to pause 3.70 times and 18.26s every minute, and the average pause duration per time is 5.01s. After writing continuous for 10s, they need to pause for 5.55 s. And in every minute, they have to revise for 0.46 times and 1.67 s, average revising duration per time is 3.78 s.(6) The language boundary location, where has bigger language unit, has the longer duration for pausing.(7) In the initial stage of writing, the pausing time is longer. Along with the writing, pause time decreases. And in the beginning of writing, low-level writers take more time to pause than high-level writers.(8) With the high-level writers compared, the low-level writers have larger data in pause percentage, pause time per minute, and cognitive costs, namely having more time for pausing. In revise parameter, the average revise duration per time for low-level writer is shorter than high-level writers'significantly.