IS WRITTEN LANGUAGE PRODUCTION MORE DIFFICULT THAN ORAL LANGUAGE PRODUCTION - A WORKING-MEMORY APPROACH

Is written language production more difficult than oral language produ ction? Probably, yes. But why? Several experiments were conducted in o rder to test the impact of low-level activities involved in writing on the performance of higher-level activities also involved in writing. Three assumptions were made: (1) the capacity of working-memory is lim ited, (2) every component of writing has a cognitive load, and (3) eve ry increase in the load devoted to the activity of one component would lead to a decrease in the remaining resources available for the other components. These low-level activities are more resource-consuming in children than in adults because children have not yet automated these activities. So, it was hypothezised that the difficulties encountered by children in dealing with the low-level activities would have a neg ative impact on the performance of higher activities. To test that hyp othesis, a serial recall paradigm was used. Adults and children were a sked to recall series of words, either orally or in writing. The resul ts showed that: (1) serial recall of children, but not of adults, was weaker with writing as compared to speaking; (2) the slowness of writi ng relative to speaking did not explain these results; and (3) the dif ficulties of graphic and of orthographic transcription were partially responsible for these results. These results are discussed in the gene ral framework of production models.