ERROR-CORRECTION IN TEXT - TESTING THE PROCESSING-DEFICIT AND KNOWLEDGE-DEFICIT HYPOTHESES

Previous research has shown that writers and editors of all ages and a bilities have trouble correcting errors in texts. In this study, we we re interested in discovering whether people do not correct these error s mainly because (1) they do not have the knowledge to correct them, o r because (2) even though they do have the knowledge to correct the er rors, they do not use it. The first case would point to a knowledge de ficit, or a deficit at the cognitive level; the second case would poin t to a processing deficit, or a deficit at the metacognitive level. Th e study compared the number and type of implanted errors corrected by high school and college subjects working on two different texts under three different conditions. We found that, for both ages, the biggest stumbling block in correcting errors was not the knowledge of how to c orrect them, but rather a failure to detect them: They did not use the ir available knowledge to find the errors. This processing deficit may be the result of a dearth of available error-finding strategies, or k nowledge may not be activated because of lack of motivation or because of a failure to perceive the nature of the task.