Analyzing writing process data
A linguistic perspective
Mariëlle Leijten | University of Antwerp & Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), University of Antwerp
Luuk Van Waes | University of Antwerp & Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), University of Antwerp
Eric Van Horenbeeck | University of Antwerp & Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO), University of Antwerp
In this paper we briefly introduce keystroke logging as a research method in writing research, focusing more explicitly on the recently developed linguistic analysis technique. In a case study of two elderly people (healthy versus demented), we illustrate some aspects of this linguistic approach. This analysis aggregates event-based data from the character level to the word level, while taking into account all the revisions that occurred during the composing process. The linguistic process analysis complements the logged process information with results from a part-of-speech tagger, a lemmatizer, a chunker, a syllabifier, and also adds word frequencies. The enriched word level information – together with action time and pause time at the word level – opens up new perspectives in the analysis of process dynamics, once more establishing a closer link between process and product analysis. We thus test the complementary diagnostic accuracy for Alzheimer’s disease, mainly focusing on cognitive and linguistic aspects that characterize the process of written language production.
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