Organization and Elaboration in Children′s Repeated Production of Prose

• Published in: Journal of experimental child psychology Vol. 55; no. 1; pp. 31 - 55
• Main Authors: Waters, Harriet Salatas, Hou, Fung-ting, Lee, Yuh-shiow
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.02.1993
• ISSN: 0022-0965; 1096-0457
• DOI: 10.1006/jecp.1993.1002

A domain-specific view of prose production was proposed in which children generate specific production schemes to meet the demands of the production task and that these production schemes are tied to specific knowledge domains that guide the organization and elaboration of passage content. In keeping with this view it was hypothesized that content elaboration should occur only across repeated productions provided the underlying scheme of the passage shows semantic similarity across productions. In order to evaluate this hypothesis two experiments were conducted in which third graders were asked to produce either narrative or descriptive passages on two occasions, spaced 2 weeks apart. Judges determined whether the second version employed a similar or different underlying scheme, and passages were scored on level of organization (narrative or descriptive) and passage length (number of propositions). For both narrative and descriptive passages, second versions were longer, more elaborate than first versions if the same scheme was used across productions, but not if a different scheme was used. Mean levels of organization increased across versions for both narrative and descriptive passages, regardless of whether the same scheme was used. Based on these findings it was proposed that semantic relatedness is a key to content elaboration across repeated productions. For improvements in organization, however, it was proposed that similarity of task format was the key, with practice enabling the individual to learn to coordinate content generation and organization processes more effectively.