Cognitive and executive processes associated with children’s writing

Abstract

Learning to write is key to successfully going through elementary education. Considerable progress in children’s writing is documented in the intermediate school grades, due to lexical and cognitive development. In line with this postulate, the goal of the study was to analyse the predictive value of attention, perception, planning, working memory and long-term memory in written expression tasks in Argentine schoolchildren. One hundred and sixty-eight boys and girls participated, between 8 and 11 years of age, who were in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade of Elementary Education. A regression analysis revealed that visuospatial perception, working memory, long-term memory, and planning may predict writing performance in children. Working memory denoted a high predictive value, along with long-term memory and visuospatial perception. The findings provide evidence about the involvement of cognitive and executive processes in written expression tasks in Spanish-speaking schoolchildren. Identifying cognitive predictors of writing skills makes it possible to design more comprehensive teaching programs that jointly contemplate training in specific writing skills and strengthening the cognitive resources of learners.