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Mark Torrance

@marktorrance.bsky.social
257 followers 334 following 24 posts

Cognitive and educational psychology of text production

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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
And in a change to our usual programme... You think you remember Babe? No, you don't. dogearedpress.wordpress.com/2026/03/18/b...
dogearedpress.wordpress.com
Babe
Ellen Willott Remember Babe? No, you don’t. ‘Oh I love Babe’ is the nostalgic refrain when Babe gets brought up. Less mainstream than Disney and Pixar classics, but more people my age than not will…
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Journal of Writing Research @journalofwriting.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
🚨Just dropped: introduction to our Special Issue, by guest editors Chris Anson and Kirsti Cole. ✅importance of empirical evidence in gen AI and writing ✅methodological pluralism ✅wider, practical implications of the research www.jowr.org/jowr/article...
jowr.org
View of Empirical studies of writing and generative AI: Introduction to the special issue
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Flow in mind, flow in fingers: Parallelism in written language production - explore.bps.org.uk/content/bpsc... A short paper summarising some of the things we've been thinking about recently. With, we believe, application beyond written production. @sentwrite.bsky.social
Flow in mind, flow in fingers: Parallelism in written language productionJens Roeser∗, Associate ProfessorMark Torrance, Associate ProfessorDepartment of Psychology, Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University∗Corresponding authorEmail:jens.roeser@ntu.ac.ukHomepage:https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/social-sciences/dr-jens-roeserSocial media:@sentwrite.bsky.socialAbstractLanguage production is known to operate on different levels of representation. “Flow” in writing results from parallelism in the coordination of subsequent planning units. In this article we discuss three points arising from Roeser, Conijn et al. (2025): (1) parallel processing results innon-additive effects, (2) study of the production of multisentence texts permits testing of questions around how language production is coordinated in real time, and, more generally, (3) statistical models must closely align with what we know about the cognitive process of what is being studied.
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Journal of Writing Research special issue: effects of AI use on writing process, product and practice - www.jowr.org/jowr/issue/v... A carefully curated collection of diverse robust empirical studies - controlled intervention evaluation, corpus analysis, computational linguistics, qualitative.
jowr.org
Vol. 17 No. 3 (2026) | Journal of Writing Research
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Jamie Reilly 🦜 @reilly-coglab.com · 01/02/2026
2026 big update to the psycholinguistic database page! If you know of corpora, lexical databases, or other resources that I've missed, please LMK. Trying to keep this thing relatively current and could use the help www.reilly-coglab.com/data
reilly-coglab.com
Psycholinguistic Databases, Stimuli, Utilities — Concepts & Cognition Laboratory
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Journal of Writing Research @journalofwriting.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Martínez-Cano et al identified narrative characteristics in writing by people with schizophrenia to determine how these relate to positive and negative symptomatology. Results reveal that language difficulties occur in writing and allow for symptom differentiation. www.jowr.org/jowr/article...
jowr.org
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Morten H. Christiansen @mh-christiansen.bsky.social · 21/01/2026
I'm very excited about this paper with @yngwienielsen.bsky.social just out in @nathumbehav.nature.com in which we provide evidence for the mental representation of non-hierarchical linguistic structure in language use. 🧵 1/4 Read the paper here: rdcu.be/eZ26u
rdcu.be
Evidence for the representation of non-hierarchical structures in language
Nature Human Behaviour - Language is often thought to be represented through hierarchically structured units. Nielsen and Christiansen find that non-hierarchical structures are present across...
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Journal of Writing Research @journalofwriting.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Hello Bluesky! Journal of Writing Research is bringing the conversation to this platform. We'll start by highlighting some of the fascinating research in our most recent volume.
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Journal of Writing Research @journalofwriting.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
𝑫𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒖𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒆𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒔𝒕𝒚𝒍𝒆𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑷𝑬𝑹𝑺𝑼𝑨𝑫𝑬 𝒄𝒐𝒓𝒑𝒖𝒔- Morris, Crossley, Holmes, and Choi. This article explores how high-quality persuasive essays differ in the linguistic features used, challenging the assumption that excellent writing is a single, uniform style. (vol. 17, no. 2)
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
My talk here: rpubs.com/mark-torranc... - Direct evidence (we think) that looking back into your text while writing serves to maintain output fluency. All the hard work done by Astha Singh (Iowa State University). Her ACL paper is linked from the final slide.
rpubs.com
RPubs - EyeLLM - EPS Winter 2026
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"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Meet multilangapp's younger sister Spellname App. We're still work in progress but try the "Density plots" tab and click on the legend keys. This is `plotly`.
jens-roeser.shinyapps.io
Spellname App
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
There's a whole rant about the publication process for this paper, possibly also valuable comment about publishing cognitive papers on a topic that looks "educational", but mainly a rant, that may feature in a later post. Probably best avoided when it appears. end/
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
...research and methods around tracking writers' eye movements within their ever-changing emerging text. Particularly github.com/chukharev/cy... and dating back to link.springer.com/article/10.1... 3/
github.com
GitHub - chukharev/cywrite: CyWrite
CyWrite. Contribute to chukharev/cywrite development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Understanding written composition as fluent, semi-parallel process with occasional hesitations - work led by @sentwrite.bsky.social. We might possibly have already mentioned doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/... And... 2/
doi.apa.org
APA PsycNet
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
When writers produce multi-sentence text they periodically pause and look back into what they've written. We describe this behaviour in adult L1 and inexpert L2 composition. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti... This brings together methods / ideas from two research streams... 1/
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"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
Paper in Language and Cognition with @marktorrance.bsky.social and @seriousstats.bsky.social We show that semantic contrast shapes timing of pre-planning in speech and writing. doi.org/10.1017/lang... If you're into how context shapes how we plan language, check it out!
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
More written production poster excitement at AMLaP2025: Thursday PM #200 English / Norwegian cognates and false friends sites.google.com/view/helenes... Friday AM #167: Spelling difficulty now disrupts future lexical retrieval rpubs.com/jensroes/aml...
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"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
Spelling can be tricky but imagine switching between two spelling systems where some words are spelled differently ("hånd" in Norwegian) and others look similar ("gift" in Norwegian isn't nice). Check out Helene's research (poster 200 on Thursday Afternoon, 4 Sept. 2025 at #AMLaP in Prague).
sites.google.com
Helene Slaattelid Øya, PhD student
PhD phase 1 poster
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"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
When do we actually think about what we want to say and what words to use? Interestingly our mind does a lot of this work while we're writing text. In fact, we demonstrated (psycnet.apa.org/record/2026-...) that even young writers often don't stop before starting a new sentence. Way to multitask!
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
This paper, of which I'm inordinately proud, is now out in JEP-General doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/.... Huge credit to Jens Roeser @sentwrite.bsky.social for conception and all the heavy lifting.
doi.apa.org
APA PsycNet
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Writers composing multi-sentence texts often pause briefly, glance back at isolated words or short phrases, then continue writing. We think we have evidence that this cues what to say next. rpubs.com/mark-torranc... or, better, talk to me on Thursday morning at #AMLAP25.
Image showing research design from poster linked in text.
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"Write here, write now!" @sentwrite.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Ever wondered what happens in our mind when we write simple messages, posts, or full essays? Also how can psychologists tests theories about writing? English is known for it's tricky spelling rules which allows psychologists to study what's going on, when things are going wrong.
media.tenor.com
a cat is looking at a laptop computer screen with a lot of text on it .
ALT: a cat is looking at a laptop computer screen with a lot of text on it .
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Dagmar Divjak @dagmardivjak.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
New paper out 🎺 introducing process-based measures of automatisation in L2 The elicited imitation task is widely used as a measure of automatized L2 knowledge. However, the scoring of the task relies exclusively on product-based measures (i.e., accuracy of L2 production).
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
And to be clear, the multiple spelling errors in this thread are there for illustrative purposes, and to subliminally advertise our mail order ham side hustle.
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
This looks massively useful. Thanks so much to bsky.app/profile/mari... and team.
bsky.app
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
We don't have any new data to add just at the moment, though we do have an English written image naming dataset for difficult-to-spell words to write up. In the meantime, though, this is fun and potentially useful jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/. Short thread here bsky.app/profile/did:...
jens-roeser.shinyapps.io
Multi-language naming appNaming app
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
So please pass jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/ on to anyone you think might find psycholinguistic joy in exploring these data. I was reminded to post about this bsky.app/profile/jami... from @jamiereillycog.bsky.social. Our database features there alongside much, much more.
jens-roeser.shinyapps.io
Multi-language naming appNaming app
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Or compare typing speed in different countries / languages. These are English and Italian writers. Lots of scope for post-hock hypothesizing around effects of orthographic transparency. /6
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/ will also help you find stimuli for you written picture naming experiment, or just feed you prejudice about which Europeans are the worst spellers. Below are the top 9 hardest-to-spell Snodgrass image names. Norway taking a surprise first place. /5
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Collected face-to-face. Oh how naive we were. The plot in the first post shows correlations among naming diversity, spelling diversity, mean time onset latency (RT) and mean interkey interval once output commenced. /4
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
Data from samples of at least 60 adults naming all of the images from the colourised Snodgrass and Vaderwart picture set in their first language (Bulgarian, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish). /3
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/ is a Shiny app produced by my colleague Jens Roeser that gives access to summary data and stimulus lists from the public dataset that we report here link.springer.com/article/10.3... /2
link.springer.com
Timed written picture naming in 14 European languages - Behavior Research Methods
We describe the Multilanguage Written Picture Naming Dataset. This gives trial-level data and time and agreement norms for written naming of the 260 pictures of everyday objects that compose the color...
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 25/11/2024
This rather pretty plot shows correlations among measures from adult writers providing written names for pictures of everyday objects in one of 14 (yes 14) different European languages. Courtesy of jens-roeser.shinyapps.io/multilangapp/ . A short thread follows...
Plot showing pairwise correlations.
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Jamie Reilly 🦜 @reilly-coglab.com · 24/11/2024
It's that time again to update the lab's psycholinguistic database page. Lmk if you have any suggestions for stuff I've missed or sections to add (NLP, aphasia, discourse). Any suggestions for improving this hub would be most appreciated. www.reilly-coglab.com/data
reilly-coglab.com
Psycholinguistic Databases, Stimuli, Utilities — Concepts & Cognition Laboratory
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 23/11/2024
And me. Cognitive and educational psychology of written production.
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 06/11/2024
...often experience “flow” when composing text. Ideas seem to emerge from the fingers as you type. Our findings suggest that this results from a fundamental parallelism in how the mind plans and executes text." (2/2)
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Mark Torrance @marktorrance.bsky.social · 06/11/2024
I don't normally post about preprints but I'm really quite excited about this one (and I ought to actually post something here). Typing in tandem: language planning in multi-sentence text production is fundamentally parallel. osf.io/preprints/osf/qr58k "Competent writers... (1/2)
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