Text-production tasks at the keyboard

Abstract

One of the main process features under study in Cognitive Translation & Interpreting Studies (CTIS) is the chronological unfolding of writing tasks. This exploratory, pilot study combines pause- and text-analysis to seek tendencies and contrasts in informants’ mental processes when performing different writing tasks, analyzing their behaviors, as keylogged. The study tasks were retyping, monolingual writing, translation, revision and a multimodal task—monolingual text production based on an infographic leaflet. Task logs were chunked with the Task Segment Framework (Muñoz & Apfelthaler 2022). Several previous results were confirmed, and some others were surprising. Time spans in free writing were longer between paragraphs and sentences and, in translation, much more frequent between and within words, suggesting cognitive activities at these levels. The infographic was expected to facilitate the writing process, but most time spans were longer than in both free writing and translation. These results suggest venues for further research.