Writing is a less frequent activity than speaking even though as claimed by Rapp and Dufor (2011): “(…) as electronic communication increases, the time some people spend in written communication, through activities such as emailing, texting, chatting, instant messaging, tweeting, etc., may come close to or even surpass the time spent speaking.” (p. 4067) and as the quotation of Charles Darwin (1871), taken from his book The descent of man, indicates, writing, unlike speaking, is not instinctive (see also Pinker, 1994, for the view that speaking is an instinct.
The different studies described below relate to the production of isolated words.