Attempting to describe and explain the cognitive differences between those who write well and those who write poorly using "studies of cognitive style," "popular articles on brain research," "Piaget's work on the development of logical thought," or the work of "orality-literacy theorists," can only produce, according to Mike Rose, naive generalities and hopelessly reductive conclusions (267). Rose seems to be right in this recognition: cognitive reductionism mistakenly presumes that "unsuccessful writers think in fundamentally different ways from successful writers" (267). Clearly there are more factors at work than simple cognition - cultural, societal, etc. The question becomes, "How do we go about judging the thought processes involved with reading and writing when performance is problematic, ineffective, or stunted?" (297). If it is even possible, we must first recognize, as Rose does, that "human cognition... is rich and varied" (297). There is a complex spectrum of people who possess the same abilities to both think and write, but do so in different ways.
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