The performance of students who rewrote an experimenter-provided set of instructions in dyads or individually was compared with that of individuals who wrote without access to those instructions. A total of 49 students participated in the experiment. The rewriting groups were provided with sample instructions and were asked to improve them; the writing group simply wrote instructions. All students then wrote a second set of instructions individually. The results showed that on the first task both the dyadic rewriting group and the individual writing group significantly outperformed the individual rewriting group on a communication score. Significant differences were also found on the completeness score. The ordering of means on this measure from highest to lowest was individual rewriters, dyadic rewriters, and the writing individuals.

This study compared the performance of students who cooperated on an instruction writing task with students who worked alone. The effects of transfer from a cooperative experience to an individual writing task was also assessed. A total of 36 students were recruited from introductory psychology classes and were randomly assigned to a cooperative or individual condition. The results of the study showed that students in the cooperative condition significantly outperformed the individual group on a measure of the communicative quality of the writing on both the initial task and on the transfer task (p s <.01). No differences between the groups were found on a measure of the completeness of the written instruction on either task (p s >.05). It appears that cooperating dyads can improve the communicative quality of their instruction writing.