The relationship between the discourse knowledge and the writing performance of elementary-grade students.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 101(2) of Journal of Educational Psychology (see record 2009-04640-012). The DOI published was incorrect. The correct DOI for this article is provided in the erratum.] This study examined whether discourse knowledge about various forms of writing predicted young developing writers' (Grade 2 and Grade 4 students) story writing performance once 4 writing (handwriting fluency, spelling, attitude toward writing, advanced planning) and 3 nonwriting (grade, gender, basic reading skills) variables were controlled. It also examined whether Grade 4 students (18 boys, 14 girls) possessed more discourse knowledge than Grade 2 students (18 boys, 14 girls). Students wrote a story and responded to a series of questions designed to elicit their declarative and procedural knowledge about the characteristics of good writing in general and stories in particular as well as their knowledge about how to write. Five aspects of this discourse knowledge (substantive, production, motivation, story elements, and irrelevant) together made a unique and significant contribution to the prediction of story quality, length, and vocabulary diversity beyond the 7 control variables. In addition, older students possessed greater knowledge about the role of substantive processes, motivation, and abilities in writing. Findings support the theoretical propositions that discourse knowledge is an important element in early writing development and that such knowledge is an integral part of the knowledge-telling approach to writing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"The relationship between the discourse knowledge and the writing performance of elementary-grade students": Correction to Olinghouse and Graham (2009).

Reports an error in "The relationship between the discourse knowledge and the writing performance of elementary-grade students" by Natalie G. Olinghouse and Steve Graham (Journal of Educational Psychology, 2009[Feb], Vol 101[1], 37-50). The DOI published was incorrect. The correct DOI for this article is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2009-01936-013.) This study examined whether discourse knowledge about various forms of writing predicted young developing writers' (Grade 2 and Grade 4 students) story writing performance once 4 writing (handwriting fluency, spelling, attitude toward writing, advanced planning) and 3 nonwriting (grade, gender, basic reading skills) variables were controlled. It also examined whether Grade 4 students (18 boys, 14 girls) possessed more discourse knowledge than Grade 2 students (18 boys, 14 girls). Students wrote a story and responded to a series of questions designed to elicit their declarative and procedural knowledge about the characteristics of good writing in general and stories in particular as well as their knowledge about how to write. Five aspects of this discourse knowledge (substantive, production, motivation, story elements, and irrelevant) together made a unique and significant contribution to the prediction of story quality, length, and vocabulary diversity beyond the 7 control variables. In addition, older students possessed greater knowledge about the role of substantive processes, motivation, and abilities in writing. Findings support the theoretical propositions that discourse knowledge is an important element in early writing development and that such knowledge is an integral part of the knowledge-telling approach to writing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of instruction in narrative structure on children's writing.

Examined the possibility that direct instruction in story constituents and their interrelations could enhance 4th-grade children's organization in story writing. Whether the special instruction might affect quality, coherence, use of temporal and causal relations, and creativity in writing was also examined. 19 4th graders who scored at a low level on measures of knowledge of narrative structure were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 treatments—instruction in knowledge of story structure or instruction in dictionary-word study. The instruction included a short-term, intensive phase with 6 sessions during 2 wks and a long-term, intermittent phase with 10 sessions during 5 wks. Instruction in narrative structure had a strong positive effect on organization in storywriting and also enhanced quality. There were no differential effects of the 2 treatments on coherence, use of temporal or causal links in writing, or creativity. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explanation-based decision making: Effects of memory structure on judgment.

This article reports research that supports an explanation-based model of decision making applied to judicial decisions. In Experiment 1, recognition memory responses demonstrated that subjects spontaneously evaluated evidence in a legal judgment task by constructing an explanatory representation in the form of a narrative story. Furthermore, an item's membership in the story associated with the chosen or rejected verdict predicted subjects' ratings of its importance as evidence. In Experiment 2, subjects listened to evidence from criminal trials presented in various orders designed to manipulate the ease with which a particular explanatory summary of the evidence (story) could be constructed. The order manipulation shifted verdict choices in the direction of the more easily constructed story, implying that story structure causes decisions. In addition, the coherence of the explanatory story structure and the strength of alternative stories were major determinants of perceptions of strength of evidence and of confidence in the decision. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age and schooling effects in story recall and story production.

The relative influences of age- and schooling-related experiences on story memory and storytelling were examined. 40 kindergarten and 39 Grade 1 children whose birth dates clustered around the cutoff date for school entrance listened to and recalled short, 1-episode stories (story recall task) and completed other stories (story production task) for which they were given beginning information. Children were tested in fall (at 5.6 years) and spring (at 6.3 years) of the school year and in spring of the following school year (at 7.3 years). For the story recall task, significant age-related effects were obtained for overall amount of recall, whereas schooling-related effects in kindergarten were obtained for patterns of recall as a function of causal relations. For the story production task, age-related as well as schooling-related effects of kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 were obtained for structural complexity. Age-related effects are attributed to general development in memory capacity and deployment of cognitive resources, whereas schooling-related effects are attributed to restructuring of the story representation in memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does disclosure of emotions facilitate recovery from bereavement? Evidence from two prospective studies.

Two longitudinal studies assessed whether disclosure of emotions facilitates recovery from bereavement. Study 1 tested prospectively over a 2-year period whether the extent to which bereaved persons talked about their loss to others and disclosed their emotions was associated with better adjustment to the loss of a marital partner. There was no evidence that disclosure facilitated adjustment. Study 2 randomly assigned recently bereaved individuals either to the Pennebaker writing task (J. W. Pennebaker & S. K. Beall, 1986) or to no-essay control conditions. The writing task did not result in a reduction of distress or of doctors visits either immediately after the bereavement or at a 6-month follow-up. Beneficial effects were not demonstrated for bereaved persons who had suffered an unexpected loss or who at the time of the study still expressed a high need for emotional disclosure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of repeated practice and contextual-writing experiences on college students' writing skills.

The authors examined the effects of both general and task-specific writing experiences on college students' writing-skill development. On the basis of theories of expertise development and a cognitive process theory of writing-skill development, the authors predicted that repeated practice would be associated with superior writing skills and that after controlling for repeated practice, writing within a specific task domain would be associated with superior writing skills. Undergraduate students participated in a field experiment in which 279 students practiced their writing skills in a professionally relevant task domain, whereas another group of 385 students practiced their writing skills in a more general domain. The results were consistent with the predictions. The authors discuss implications for teaching writing skills and for general theories of expertise development in writing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Storytelling in psychotherapy: The client's subjective experience.

14 adult therapy clients were asked to report their recollections of their experience of therapy sessions. Among their recollections were reports on the subjective experience of storytelling. It was found that storytelling is primarily a way of dealing with inner disturbance. When prepared in principle to enter into the disturbance, clients may use a story to delay the entry. When reluctant in principle to make contact with the disturbance, they may tell a story as a way of managing their beliefs associated with the disturbance. Regardless of the motivation giving rise to a story, once engaged in it, clients frequently contact the inner disturbance whether they intend to or not. The subjective experience of telling a story in therapy sheds a different light on what has been referred to in the literary criticism literature as the functions of narrative, and raises implications for the practice of psychotherapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading ability and use of a story schema in recalling and reconstructing information.

Examined the differences between 48 good and 48 poor 6th-grade readers' use of a story schema in recall and reconstruction tasks. Ss heard a story either in canonical (standard) or interleaved (a form of scrambling) format and were instructed to recall the story and reconstruct the order of story events either directly as they heard it or as it should be. Performance in the reconstruction and recall tasks showed that both good and poor readers could use a story schema when the story followed canonical format; however poor readers' story schema was either not as well-developed or as efficiently used. Both recall and reconstruction data provided evidence that schematic retrieval is not obligatory for either type of reader. Good readers could use a story schema when cued to do so in any task, but poor readers could do so only in the reconstruction task. Differential improvement of poor readers' performance relative to that of good readers' in a 2nd phase of the experiment due to previous experience in the 1st phase was obtained only in the reconstruction task. Conclusions support the view that poor readers perform differently from younger normal children. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory connections between thematically similar episodes.

Investigated the use of cross-episode connections (i.e., when 2 episodes with a shared theme are connected through a thematic structure) in comprehension and memory in 6 experiments with 106 undergraduates. Results from the use of a priming technique in Exps I and II indicate that verification time for a test sentence from 1 story was speeded by an immediately preceding test sentence from a thematically similar story but only when Ss were given instructions to rate the similarities of the stories. In Exp III–VI, a single test sentence was presented immediately after a story was read, with timing controlled by presenting the story one word at a time. Response time for a test sentence from a previously read story was facilitated if the immediately preceding story was thematically similar but only if the previously read story was extensively prestudied. It is concluded that during reading of an episode, thematic information may be encoded to lead to activation of similar episodes and formation of connections in memory between episodes, but such encoding is not automatic and depends on Ss' strategies and task difficulty. Sample stories are appended. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The robustness and temporal course of the story schema's influence on recall.

Three experiments are reported in which subjects were asked to remember simple stories they had read. The goal was to examine the power of the story schema, postulated in a contemporary story grammar, to influence subjects' level and organization of memory, particularly when they are presented with scrambled versions of stories. The results of Experiment 1 are consistent with previous findings, and we demonstrated the schema's influence on the level and organization of free recall. In Experiment 2 we demonstrated the strong influence of the schema on recall of details (measured by a cloze procedure), as well as recall for the story's gist (measured by a summary construction task). Finally, in Experiment 3 we demonstrated that the schema's influence on the organization of memory holds over time and serves to buttress the more abstract and general elements of the narrative. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Buoyancy-Driven Flow in a Two-Story Compartment

In this study we develop a theoretical model for the buoyancy-driven flow in a two-story compartment. In particular, the influence of the vent area (A*/H2) and the upper story height (β) on the evolution of the “first front” is presented. We note that the steady-state thickness (1s;1s,m) of the buoyant fluid accumulated on the ceiling in the lower story and the filling time for the upper story decrease as the vent area increases. Before the upper story is fully filled, the flow may become “stack driven” by the buoyant fluid in the upper story. For sufficiently high upper story and large vent area, the buoyant fluid in the lower story can be completely drained. The upper story serves as a “buffer zone” which helps to reduce the accumulated buoyant fluid in the lower story.     

Evidence evaluation in complex decision making.

Investigated the role of representation of evidence in the decision processes of 26 21–73 yr old experienced jurors to test a 3-stage story model of juror decision making. The 3 stages are evidence evaluation through story construction, decision alternative representation (verdict category establishment for the juror task), and story classification (selecting the verdict category that best fits the story based on the evidence). Ss made individual decisions on the verdicts for a filmed murder trial. Extensive interviews were conducted to determine Ss' cognitive representations of the evidence in the case, the verdict categories presented in the trial judge's instructions, and the procedures they were to follow according to law to reach a verdict. Results indicate, as hypothesized, that the trial evidence was represented in a story form. Differences among Ss in cognitive representations of evidence were correlated with their verdicts, although other aspects of the decision process (verdict category representations, application of the standard of proof procedural instruction) were not. It is concluded that adequate theories of decision making must emphasize cognitive aspects of performance, such as the representation of evidence. (64 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the importance of mood intensity and encoding demands in memory: Commentary on Hasher, Rose, Zacks, Sanft, and Doren.

Comments on the failure of L. Hasher et al (see record 1986-03061-001) to find either an overall reduction in story recall or selectivity effects in recall due to mildly depressed mood state. It is suggested that their negative findings may be the result of a weak individual difference mood manipulation and that the story recall task may make insufficient encoding demands to reveal the effects of mood on recall. Although the negative findings of Hasher et al appear valid, the conditions of their experiments are those which appear least likely to produce mood effects on recall. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Written emotional expression: Effect sizes, outcome types, and moderating variables.

A research synthesis was conducted to examine the relationship between a written emotional expression task and subsequent health. This writing task was found to lead to significantly improved health outcomes in healthy participants. Health was enhanced in 4 outcome types—reported physical health, psychological well-being, physiological functioning, and general functioning—but health behaviors were not influenced. Writing also increased immediate (pre- to postwriting) distress, which was unrelated to health outcomes. The relation between written emotional expression and health was moderated by a number of variables, including the use of college students as participants, gender, duration of the manipulation, publication status of the study, and specific writing content instructions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Story telling: is it really research?

In this paper I will suggest ways in which you may consider a story as a legitimate research product. I view the story as interpreted work communicated through writing as the research product. 'Doing' interpretive research is not an easy option in research. In this paper I will focus upon some of the complexities in creating an acceptable and accessible research product. I will cover five interrelated areas: journaling, observing, listening, writing and rigour. The term 'research product' refers to the outcome of the research process. By that I mean the dissertation, the research report or the published article. The notion of legitimacy is informed by Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics which does not show us what to do, but asks us to question what is 'going on' while researching. In this paper I ask you to consider the entire research process as a reflexive exercise which provides answers to the question: 'What is going on in methods?'. I claim that if the research product is well sign-posted, the readers will be able to travel easily through the worlds of the participants and makers of the story and decide for themselves whether the story is a legitimate research endeavour.     

Enhancing interest and performance with a utility value intervention.

We tested whether a utility value intervention (via manipulated relevance) influenced interest and performance on a task and whether this intervention had different effects depending on an individual's performance expectations or prior performance. Interest was defined as triggered situational interest (i.e., affective and emotional task reactions) and maintained situational interest (i.e., inclination to engage in the task in the future). In 2 randomized experiments, 1 conducted in the laboratory and the other in a college classroom, utility value was manipulated through a writing task in which participants were asked to explain how the material they were learning (math or psychology) was relevant to their lives (or not). The intervention increased perceptions of utility value and interest, especially for students who were low in expected (laboratory) or actual (classroom) performance. Mediation analyses revealed that perceptions of utility value explained the effects of the intervention on interest and predicted performance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Written spelling to dictation: Sound-to-spelling regularity affects both writing latencies and durations.

The authors examined the effect of sound-to-spelling regularity on written spelling latencies and writing durations in a dictation task in which participants had to write each target word 3 times in succession. The authors found that irregular words (i.e., those containing low-probability phoneme-to-grapheme mappings) were slower both to initially produce and to execute in writing than were regular words. The regularity effect was found both when participants could and could not see their writing (Experiments 1 and 2) and was larger for low- than for high-frequency words (Experiment 3). These results suggest that central processing of the conflict generated by lexically specific and assembled spelling information for irregular words is not entirely resolved when the more peripheral processes controlling handwriting begin. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Primary grade writing instruction: A national survey.

A random sample of primary grade teachers (N = 178; 97% female) from across the United States was surveyed about their classroom instructional practices in writing. Most of the participating teachers (72%) took an eclectic approach to writing instruction, combining elements from the 2 most common methods for teaching writing: process writing and skills instruction. Although 90% of the teachers reported using most of the writing instructional practices that were included in the survey, there was considerable variability between teachers in how often they used specific practices. The study provides support for the following 7 recommendations for reforming primary grade writing instruction: (a) increase amount of time students spend writing; (b) increase time spent writing expository text; (c) provide better balance between time spent writing, learning writing strategies, and teaching writing skills; (d) place more emphasis on fostering students' motivation for writing; (e) develop stronger connections for writing between home and school; (f) make computers a more integral part of the writing program; and (g) improve professional development for writing instruction in teacher education programs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)