The Triple Task Technique for Studying the Process of Writing

Abstract

In this chapter, we first present two variants of a technique of secondary reaction time task and verbalization task that allow researchers (1) to estimate the general temporal organization of the writing process, (2) to analyse the recursiveness of writing and (3) to measure the amount of resources allocated to the writing processes (Kellogg, 1987b; Levy & Ransdell, 1994, 1995). Next, we present a series of experiments that evaluated the validity of the method. We then synthesize studies that used the triple task method to address questions concerning the way by which situation-specific or writer-specific factors affect functional characteristics of writing. We describe results from experiments that investigated the role of writers’ knowledge, type of text planning, writing medium and cognitive capacity on resources allocation to the writing processes and on their temporal organization. Finally, we delineate how the triple task technique can be varied to answer future research questions.