Decentering, as defined by Jean Piaget, occurs when the mind considers and coordinates experience from more than one perspective. Focusing on decentering in two parts of the writing process--discovery and audience awareness--a study examined the relationship between the personal and impersonal decentering abilities of college freshmen and their overall writing abilities. Subjects, 60 college freshmen enrolled in four composition classes at a midwestern state university, prepared three short essays designed to measure the two decentering traits, and a longer essay designed to measure overall writing effectiveness as well as decentering ability. Results indicated that writers who rate high in overall writing ability usually possess strong personal and impersonal decentering abilities, and vice versa. Analyses also showed that personal and impersonal decentering skills occurred together in the same writing task. In addition, findings indicated that both personal and impersonal decentering abilities did not remain constant across all writing tasks and that personal decentering ability is likely to change as writing topics change. Finally, results indicated a high correlation between audience awareness and overall writing effectiveness across all writing tasks. The study suggests that personal and impersonal decentering are important activities in the writing process and that development of decentering abilities may facilitate development of overall writing ability. (Twenty-six references are included. Four appendixes contain the prompt for part one writing samples and the scoring guide to measure insight discovery, audience awareness, and overall writing effectiveness. Sample responses and analyses for each scoring guide are included.) (JD)