In this study we investigated the intricate interplay between central linguistic processing and peripheral motor processes during typewriting. Participants had to typewrite two-constituent (noun-noun) Finnish compounds in response to picture presentation while their typing behavior was registered. As dependent measures we used writing onset time to assess what processes were completed before writing and inter-key intervals to assess what processes were going on during writing. It was found that writing onset time was determined by whole word frequency rather than constituent frequencies, indicating that compound words are retrieved as whole orthographic units before writing is initiated. In addition, we found that the length of the first syllable also affects writing onset time, indicating that the first syllable is fully prepared before writing commences. The inter-key interval results showed that linguistic planning is not fully ready before writing, but cascades into the motor execution phase. More specifically, inter-key intervals were largest at syllable and morpheme boundaries, supporting the view that additional linguistic planning takes place at these boundaries. Bigram and trigram frequency also affected inter-key intervals with shorter intervals corresponding to higher frequencies. This can be explained by stronger memory traces for frequently co-occurring letter sequences in the motor memory for typewriting. These frequency effects were even larger in the second than in the first constituent, indicating that low-level motor memory starts to become more important during the course of writing compound words. We discuss our results in the light of current models of morphological processing and written word production.

The present study presents contrastive analyses of task-oriented spoken and written discourse in terms of lexical diversity, lexical density, and word length. In an age-matched within-language comparison (Swedish), written discourse consistently scored higher on these measures. It is suggested that the same type of differences will hold for any language, because of the difference between speech and writing in processing constraints. The absolute scores, however, can vary substantially for reasons of language typology. An extended, cross-linguistic analysis (English, Hebrew, Icelandic, Swedish), focusing on word length, was made to substantiate that claim. Further, cross-age-group comparisons of lexical quanta indicated a dynamic interaction between speech and writing in development. Spoken discourse eventually comes to “learn” from the development of writing.

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For some forty years the eye-tracking technology has facilitated the study of eye movement patterns for sighted people during reading and other visual activities. Today -a newly developed automatic finger tracking system makes it possible to reconstruct blind peopleÕs tactile reading in real time and to automatically analyze finger movements during Braille text reading and tactile picture recognition. In this case study, the very first automatic finger tracking system is presented together with results indicating how Braille readers can increase awareness of their own reading styles. This opens up for future Braille education to become more evidence-based and, at the same time, for a new research field: contrastive studies of language in its auditory, visual and tactile manifestations.

The aim of this article is to integrate findings reported in the preceding articles in this collection, employing a global discourse perspective labeled discourse stance. The paper attempts to clarify what is meant by this notion, and how it can contribute to the evaluation of text construction along the major variables of our project: target Language (Dutch, English, French etc.), Age (developmental level and schooling), Modality (writing vs. speech), and Genre (personal experience narratives vs. expository discussion). We propose a general conceptual framework for characterizing discourse stance as a basis for an empirically testable potential model of this key aspect of text construction and discourse analysis. Unlike the cross-linguistically data-based studies reported in the rest of this collection, which involve quantitative as well as well as qualitative analyses, this concluding article presents selected pieces of text from our sample to serve as case studies that illustrate our general line of reasoning, rather than to test specific hypotheses.