A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing

By L. Flower, J. Hayes. 1981

There is a venerable tradition in rhetoric and composition which sees the composing process as a series of decisions and choices.1 However, it is no longer easy simply to assert this position, unless you are prepared to answer a number of questions, the most pressing of which probably is: "What then are the criteria which govern that choice?" Or we could put it another way: "What guides the decisions writers make as they write?" In a recent survey of composition research, Odell, Cooper, and Courts noticed that some of the most thoughtful people in the field are giving us two reasonable but somewhat different answers:

Subfields: Cognitive Science & Psychology

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Citations in the corpus

Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback (2023, background): “Iterative self -refinement is a fundamental characteristic of human problem-solving (Simon, 1962; Flower and Hayes, 1981; Amabile, 1983).”
Survey of the State of the Art in Natural Language Generation: Core tasks, applications and evaluation (2017, background): “…also succeed in keeping the attention of the reader through narrative techniques, and in occasionally surprising the reader, for example, by creative language use such as small jokes or well-placed metaphors (see e.g., among many others, Flower & Hayes, 1981; Nauman et al., 2011; Veale & Li, 2015).”
Mechanical Novel: Crowdsourcing Complex Work through Reflection and Revision (2016, background): “Similar processes occur across many creative domains such as art, architecture, and writing [33, 11, 2].”
A Cognitive Model of Construction Workers’ Unsafe Behaviors (2016, background): “Examples can be seen in the cognitive models for writing (Flower and Hayes 1981), document classification (Farrow 1991), and second-language reading (Koda 1988).”
Students' use of writing strategies and their English writing achievements in Taiwan (2012, methodology): “Her findings were then formalized by Flower and Hayes (1981) in an “explicit” model of the writing process, including the three major stages of planning, composing (also referred to as translating), and reviewing.”
The writing approaches of university students (2001, unknown): “Although cognitive models have focused on describing the writing processes of college students in terms of problem solving (Flower and Hayes 1979), memory (McCutchenson 1996), and cognitive development (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1987; Fitzgerald and Shanahan 2000), writing theory remains somewhat lim”
The Effect of the Process Writing Approach on Writing Success and Anxiety. (2014, methodology): “Constant monitoring during the writing process serves to determine the transitions from one phase to another (Flower & Hayes, 1981).”
Understanding the benefits of providing peer feedback: how students respond to peers’ texts of varying quality (2015, background): “As Flower and Hayes (1981) noted, ‘‘Writing is best understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes which writers orchestrate or organize during the act of composing.’’”
Creative Writing with a Machine in the Loop: Case Studies on Slogans and Stories (2018, background): “For example, Flower and Hayes [10] describe the hierarchical nature of the creative writing process; future system designs could refect knowledge about the cognitive processes of writing to better support the writing process.”
Same language, different functions: A cross-genre analysis of Chinese EFL learners’ writing performance (2016, background): “Writing is a highly complex task that integrates cognitive processing, deployment of linguistic knowledge, and awareness of the social context in which the written communication takes place (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2013; Flower & Hayes, 1981; Gee, 2001; Graham& Perin, 2007).”
Promoting Effective Task Interpretation as an Important Work Habit: A Key to Successful Teaching and Learning (2004, background): “For example, good writers know that writing tasks typically play out in four interlocking and recursive stages, namely planning, drafting, editing, and revising (Englert et al., 1992; Flower & Hayes, 1981; Wong, 1999).”
Research Into Chinese Efl Learner Strategies: Methods, Findings and Instructional Issues (2003, background): “Regarding revision as a cognitive process (Flower and Hayes 1981), Yu’s comparative study of revision in Ll and L2 writing showed that revision was worthwhile in light of the reinterpretation of revision.”