@inproceedings{banawan-etal-2026-modeling,
title = "Modeling Writing Development as Coordinated Change Across Linguistic and Semantic Dimensions",
author = "Banawan, Michelle and
Potter, Andrew and
Arner, Tracy and
McNamara, Danielle S",
editor = "Ma, Martin Ziqiao and
Liu, Emmy and
Liu, Jing and
Chang, Tyler A. and
Fourtassi, Abdellah and
Warstadt, Alex and
Hahn, Michael and
Sun, Weiwei and
Shi, Freda",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Computational Developmental Linguistics ({CDL})",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "Grand Hyatt Manchester San Diego, 1 Market Pl, San Diego, CA 92101",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.cdl-1.14/",
pages = "83--91",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-428-6",
abstract = "Writing development is often assessed through aggregate improvements in surface-level features, yet less attention has been given to how multiple linguistic dimensions evolve jointly over time. We model writing development as a multidimensional system shaped by stable individual variation and instructional progression across staged assignments, using interpretable linguistic features from the Writing Analytics Toolkit (WAT) and transformer-based sentence embeddings.Variance partitioning reveals substantial between-student stability alongside stage-dependent change. Mixed-effects models identify non-uniform developmental trajectories: academic focus, information density, and conventional language increase, whereas development of ideas and lexical variety decline, indicating tradeoffs across competing dimensions. Cross-lagged analyses further show dynamic dependencies between dimensions, suggesting coordinated change rather than independent progression.Embedding-based analyses capture stage-dependent shifts in semantic representation, with larger changes in earlier stages and increasing stability over time. Although assignment structure contributes to observed variation, stable individual differences and cross-stage dependencies indicate underlying developmental processes that generalize across tasks.Together, these findings characterize writing development as structured change in a multidimensional representational system, highlighting the need for computational models that capture stable variation, non-monotonic trajectories, and interactions among linguistic components."
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<abstract>Writing development is often assessed through aggregate improvements in surface-level features, yet less attention has been given to how multiple linguistic dimensions evolve jointly over time. We model writing development as a multidimensional system shaped by stable individual variation and instructional progression across staged assignments, using interpretable linguistic features from the Writing Analytics Toolkit (WAT) and transformer-based sentence embeddings.Variance partitioning reveals substantial between-student stability alongside stage-dependent change. Mixed-effects models identify non-uniform developmental trajectories: academic focus, information density, and conventional language increase, whereas development of ideas and lexical variety decline, indicating tradeoffs across competing dimensions. Cross-lagged analyses further show dynamic dependencies between dimensions, suggesting coordinated change rather than independent progression.Embedding-based analyses capture stage-dependent shifts in semantic representation, with larger changes in earlier stages and increasing stability over time. Although assignment structure contributes to observed variation, stable individual differences and cross-stage dependencies indicate underlying developmental processes that generalize across tasks.Together, these findings characterize writing development as structured change in a multidimensional representational system, highlighting the need for computational models that capture stable variation, non-monotonic trajectories, and interactions among linguistic components.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Modeling Writing Development as Coordinated Change Across Linguistic and Semantic Dimensions
%A Banawan, Michelle
%A Potter, Andrew
%A Arner, Tracy
%A McNamara, Danielle S.
%Y Ma, Martin Ziqiao
%Y Liu, Emmy
%Y Liu, Jing
%Y Chang, Tyler A.
%Y Fourtassi, Abdellah
%Y Warstadt, Alex
%Y Hahn, Michael
%Y Sun, Weiwei
%Y Shi, Freda
%S Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Computational Developmental Linguistics (CDL)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Grand Hyatt Manchester San Diego, 1 Market Pl, San Diego, CA 92101
%@ 979-8-89176-428-6
%F banawan-etal-2026-modeling
%X Writing development is often assessed through aggregate improvements in surface-level features, yet less attention has been given to how multiple linguistic dimensions evolve jointly over time. We model writing development as a multidimensional system shaped by stable individual variation and instructional progression across staged assignments, using interpretable linguistic features from the Writing Analytics Toolkit (WAT) and transformer-based sentence embeddings.Variance partitioning reveals substantial between-student stability alongside stage-dependent change. Mixed-effects models identify non-uniform developmental trajectories: academic focus, information density, and conventional language increase, whereas development of ideas and lexical variety decline, indicating tradeoffs across competing dimensions. Cross-lagged analyses further show dynamic dependencies between dimensions, suggesting coordinated change rather than independent progression.Embedding-based analyses capture stage-dependent shifts in semantic representation, with larger changes in earlier stages and increasing stability over time. Although assignment structure contributes to observed variation, stable individual differences and cross-stage dependencies indicate underlying developmental processes that generalize across tasks.Together, these findings characterize writing development as structured change in a multidimensional representational system, highlighting the need for computational models that capture stable variation, non-monotonic trajectories, and interactions among linguistic components.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.cdl-1.14/
%P 83-91
Markdown (Informal)
[Modeling Writing Development as Coordinated Change Across Linguistic and Semantic Dimensions](https://aclanthology.org/2026.cdl-1.14/) (Banawan et al., CDL 2026)
ACL