title: Effects of disfluency in writing.
abstract: While much previous research has suggested that decreased transcription fluency has a detrimental effect on writing, there is recent evidence that decreased fluency can actually benefit cognitive processing. Across a series of experiments, we manipulated transcription fluency of ostensibly skilled typewriters by asking them to type essays in two conditions: both-handed and one-handed typewriting. We used the Coh-Metrix text analyser to investigate the effects of decreased transcription fluency on various aspects of essay writing, such as lexical sophistication, sentence complexity, and cohesion of essays (important indicators of successful writing). We demonstrate that decreased fluency can benefit certain aspects of writing and discuss potential mechanisms underlying disfluency effects in essay writing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. smedimorec@uwaterloo.ca.
authors.forename: Srdan
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7552-5432
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Medimorec
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Evan F
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Risko
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012660:Semantics; D013334:Students; D014495:Universities; D014956:Writing
keywords: Coh-Metrix; disfluency; writing