Generating Thinking-Aloud Protocols: Impact on the Narrative Writing of College Students
Abstract
The reactivity of protocol analysis, a widely used process-tracing method in writing research, was investigated. Writers composed a letter to a close friend in each of three conditions: a concurrent thinking-aloud protocol, a retrospective protocol based on watching a real-time replay of the original composition, and a no-protocol control. The rate at which words were composed per minute and clauses created per minute was significantly slower in the thinking-aloud condition, presumably because of the additional demands of verbalization. Intrusions, or content occurring because of writing in a psychology experiment, were also assessed. The percentage of intrusions referring to being in an experiment, or to content in general, were the same across conditions. Thinking aloud slowed the rate of composition, but did not reliably alter the syntactic complexity or quantity of words or clauses written.
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Thinking aloud while writing does not necessarily change the written product, but frequent verbalisation prompts can slow the writing process.
“While research has shown that writing while thinking aloud doesn't necessarily affect the written product, prompting writers to verbalise too often can result in the writing process being slower than usual [54].”
From Interacting with Next-Phrase Suggestions: How Suggestion Systems Aid and Influence the Cognitive Processes of Writing (2023) · cites this paper as [54]
Cites
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Bhat, A., Agashe, S., Oberoi, P., Mohile, N., Jangir, R., & Joshi, A. (2023) · Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces · doi:10.1145/3581641.3584060 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ransdell, S.
- Corresponding author
- Ransdell, Sarah
- Venue
- The American Journal of Psychology
- Publisher
- University of Illinois Press
- Published
- 1995
- Volume
- 108
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 89
- ISSN
- 0002-9556 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2333638240
- Cited by
- 51
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 2 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 2 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 2.36
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The American Journal of Psychology (publishedVersion)
- NSUWorks (Nova Southeastern University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Writing and Handwriting Education
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Mental Health via Writing
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Keywords
- think-aloud, narrative writing, university students, syntactic complexity, intrusion, verbalization
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