Muriel Harris

Simultaneous and Successive Processing in University Students: Contribution to Academic Performance

Seventy undergraduate subjects were tested individually on a battery of tests designed to assess simultaneous and successive processing. Changes made from the commonly administered batteries included individual administration, generous time limits on most tests, more difficult items, and more verbal tests. These changes were made in order to test the limits of university students and to increase the verbal content of both processing modes. The expected factor structure emerged and was found to correlate significantly and differentially with other measures of academic performance: scores on the simultaneous processing factor correlated significantly with Scholastic Aptitute Test (SAT) Math scores, while scores on the successive processing factor correlated significantly with grades from the universitys introductory English composition course.

Simultaneous and Successive Cognitive Processing and Writing Skills: Relationships Between Proficiencies.

This pilot study investigated relationships between individual differences in levels of writing skills and proficiencies at simultaneous and successive cognitive processing. Data from a group of 46 subjects indicate that scores on successive processing tasks were able to predict final grades in an introductory English composition course (p<.01). This suggested both the possibility and importance of investigating further how simultaneous and (especially) successive processing relate to writing skills. With three subjects used for pilot data, low scores in successive processing showed relationships with sentence-level errors and with the ability to develop sequences of ideas in writing. Low scores in simultaneous processing correlated with an inability to indicate clear relationships between sentences and paragraphs. Planning, a third cognitive factor, was found to be a powerful influence in organizing content. In the interaction of planning and simultaneous processing, lack of planning ability may interfere with the writers ability to survey and thus organize his or her material.

From the (Writing) Center to the Edge: Moving Writers along the Internet.

T he Internet, an electronic network linking computers throughout the world, invites teachers to explore its uses for writing instruction because it is a text-based environment. Users communicate by writing messages that travel out onto the Internet, read the prose in its vast pool of resources, and gather information from those resources for their own writing. In high schools and colleges, new Internet environments for students who are writing in many fields have proliferated, and they continue to develop almost as fast as the Internet is developing. Among these diverse environments are the various shapes and services of on-line writing centers at both the secondary and postsecondary level. Because writing centers focus on one-to-one interaction with writers and because they invite collaboration and dialogue about writing as part of their tutorial approach, on-line programs developed in various writing centers are continuing this emphasis as they reach out to writers in new ways. An overview here of some of the new developments in on-line writing centers will indicate both the variety of ways that writers can use the Internet and the diversity of the approaches being developed in various writing centers-including e-mail services, on-line discussion groups and bulletin boards, real-time conversational opportunities, and resources writers can use as they write. Although there are far more programs taking shape than are described here, the ones I will discuss are representative of the directions being taken in writing centers across the country. To learn more about each program, use its Internet address found in the resources list at the end of this article. For schools not yet part of the 24 percent of K-12 schools using the Internet (Survey finds 1995), Robert Doty (1995) notes that