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On a daily basis, most people read about issues of interest from a diversity of sources. Moreover, the information they encounter frequently encompass discrepancies, ranging from minor inconsistencies to straight contradictions. Readers may construct coherent representations from discrepant contents by linking contents to their respective sources and connecting the sources with agree-disagree or other types of connectives. Across research studies, however, college-level readers' attention to sources has been found to vary according to individual, text and task dimensions. The present study tested the assumption that readers' strategies depend both on the discrepancy of the information and on the context in which the task is framed. Moreover, beliefs about science were included as potential moderator of context effects. One hundred and sixty university students were tasked to read about a series of social-scientific issues. The task was framed in either a university context or a personal context scenario. For each topic, the participants read two short texts which provided either consistent or discrepant information, and then they wrote a short overview essay. The university context had a significant impact on indicators related to a documents model representation (e.g., text switches, number of adversative connectors in the essay) and standards for presentation (e.g., time on the essay/task page, formal features of the essay). The data support a context-dependent view of reading comprehension, whereby both reading behavior and outcomes are primarily a function of the standards and goals set by the reader.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11145-022-10321-2.

The aim of this study is to compare perceptions of homework from the parents' and the teachers' perspectives. We hypothesize that upper-middle class parents' perception of homework will match the teachers'. We hypothesize that there will be a mismatch between working-class parents' perspective and teachers' perspective. This anonymous study will be run online, in France.

This study examined the role of source credibility in the validation of factual information embedded in short narratives. In a self-paced reading experiment, we tested the assumption that the degre...

International audience; Background: Drawing on theories of purposeful reading, this study explored task conditions that support fifth graders' selective reading of documents in order to answer questions. More specifically, we investigated whether promoting students' elaboration of their task model increases task performance. Methods: Participants had to answer series of questions by searching documents for the relevant information. Half the participants received a task model prompt, and half received a control prompt. Participants' eye movements were recorded during text search, in order to investigate more precisely the effect of an enhanced task model. Results: Participants provided more correct answers in the task model condition than in the control condition, but there was no difference in response time. Unexpectedly, eye movement analysis did not reveal any differences between conditions concerning the number of visits and visit time to relevant and irrelevant areas of the document.

This study investigates the relationship between teenagers’ use of social networking sites (SNS) and their sourcing abilities. Sourcing is defined as students’ ability (1) to discriminate reliable ...

This study examines the development of source evaluation skills in four groups of students from 10 to 19 years of age. We designed a set of tasks based on a distinction between three components of ...

Recent research suggests that readers' subjective task understanding influences reading processes and outcomes. Therefore, the present study's aim was to investigate whether the task demands that readers retrospectively report relate to multiple document comprehension strategies and outcome. A total of 310 university students completed three units from a standardized multiple-document comprehension test and answered an open-ended task demands question after each unit. Amongst others, participants comprehended single- and multiple-document activities to be task demands. Comprehending deep-level single-document activities and management activities to be task demands related to corroboration and proactive sourcing, respectively. However, comprehending multiple-document activities to be task demands was related neither to students' multiple-document comprehension nor to their realized multiple-document activities. The data suggest a context schema formation across test units: In later units the participants comprehended more often multiple-document activities and less often surface-level single-document and management activities to be task demands, and conducted more sourcing.

To be able to solve complex information problems in a digital environment is a key 21st century skill. Technology users usually expect to achieve their goals in a fast and accurate way. However, the actual relationship between time-on-task and task outcome is currently not well understood. We analyzed data from a large-scale international study in which representative samples of adults had to solve more or less complex problems using standard computer applications. Our results indicate that different task characteristics influence the relationship between problem-solving performance and time-on-task in specific ways. Spending more time on a task is more likely to compensate an average problem solver when task complexity can be attributed to intrinsic task and technology drivers than when complexity stems from the cognitive/metacognitive activities belonging to information problem-solving processes per se, especially acquiring and evaluating information. Thus, the interpretation of time-on-task should take the source of difficulty into consideration. Implications for personal and professional development are discussed.

Dans cet article nous presentons une reflexion sur l'apprentissage de l'evaluation critique de documents multiples par des eleves de college. Par « documents multiples » nous entendons tout ensemble d’objets « qui portent une intention communicative » (Tricot, Sahut, & Lemarie, 2016). Ces documents peuvent, ou non, etre « composites » (Bautier et al., 2012). Leur caracteristique principale est d’emaner de differentes sources d’informations, ce qui entraine la necessite d’evaluer ces sources pendant la lecture. Nous avons conduit une etude aupres de 150 eleves de troisieme pour mesurer l’impact pedagogique d’ateliers sur l’evaluation des sources sur la capacite des eleves a analyser des documents contradictoires sur un meme sujet. Les resultats montrent que les eleves ayant participe aux ateliers, comparativement a ceux des classes-temoins, ont mieux detecte des liens provenant de sources peu fiables et choisi davantage des documents signes par des auteurs competents, tout en justifiant leur choix par des criteres de source. Ces resultats se sont averes transposables a differentes contenus (histoire, sciences et techniques, sante et nutrition, etc.), ce qui laisse penser que l’intervention pourrait etre adaptee a plusieurs disciplines sans bousculer completement les programmes de chacune.

Searching texts both online and in print has become an essential skill for twenty-first-century students. Although most children can read fluently and comprehend short texts by the age of 10, research suggests that older students and even adults experience difficulties when searching for information inside texts. This chapter synthesizes various theoretical models of the processes involved in information search, drawing from information science as well as cognitive psychology. We identify three key processes that may represent specific challenges for young students: constructing a task model, selectively scanning and assessing the relevance of information. We review the evidence regarding children’s ability to search for information, and we stress the importance of the task model on subsequent search processes. In the last part of the paper, we review attempts to foster children’s information search skills and we highlight some preconditions for skill acquisition. Finally, we discuss the implications of research on children’s search skills for future research in this domain.

Fil: Rouet, Jean-François. University of Poitiers; Francia Fil: Rouet, Jean-François. Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage; Francia Fil: Saux, Gastón. Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. Facultad de Piscología y Psicopedagogía; Argentina Fil: Saux, Gastón. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina Fil: Ros, Christine. University of Poitiers; Francia Fil: Ros, Christine. Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage; Francia Fil: Stadtler, Marc. University of Bochum. Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft; Alemania Fil: Vibert, Nicolás. University of Poitiers; Francia Fil: Vibert, Nicolás. Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l'Apprentissage; Francia Fil: Britt, Anne M. Northern Illinois University. Department of Psychology; Estados Unidos Abstract: Text comprehension involves the ability to understand how texts relate to the situation they describe and to each other (i.e., a Document model; Perfetti, Rouet, & Britt, 1999). Research into Document models has emphasized the role of information sources in structuring readers' mental models of situations. The present paper reviews research on source comprehension and examines new hypotheses regarding source encoding during text comprehension. Two experiments examined college students’ evaluation and recognition of two embedded sources as a function of the consistency of their statements (Experiments 1 and 2) and the demands of the reading task (Experiment 2). Sources were introduced either with a knowledge feature (e.g., how the source knew what they knew) or a control feature. Readers were more likely to select the knowledgeable source as more competent and to justify their selection by referring to the knowledge feature (Experiment 1). Experiment 2 found that readers’ preference for knowledgeable sources was stronger when the content statements were discrepant. Preference for knowledgeable sources was also stronger when the task focused on source knowledge, as compared to a control evaluation task or a baseline reading task. The source knowledge evaluation task distinctively enhanced participants' integration of the source designations with their respective statements, as compared to the control and baseline conditions. Results are discussed in light of current theories of single and multiple document comprehension.

Multiple document comprehension refers to people’s acquisition of information from more than one document for the purpose of achieving their goals. Comprehending single documents involves constructing a long-term memory representation in which text contents get integrated with the reader’s prior knowledge. Both text structure and readers’ goals are important in determining which information is included in the reader’s memory representation. In multiple document comprehension, documents are associated with distinct source features and they do not have to follow the coherence and cohesion principles that define single documents. Thus, multiple document comprehension involves several additional challenges, including selecting documents, making strategic reading decisions, and sourcing. The documents model framework (DMF) proposed two additional representations beyond those of single-document comprehension: an intertext model based on identifying and interpreting the document sources and an integrated situation model based on representing conceptual connections across documents organized around the structure of the interpreted task. The RESOLV model extended the DMF by proposing that readers formulate their reading task within a larger physical and social situation (a context model), creating goals and methods to achieve those goals (a task model). One such task situation that has received research attention presents people with documents that describe discrepant accounts of some event. The discrepancy-induced source comprehension (DISC) hypothesis predicted that readers would use source information via an intertext model to resolve the contradictory information in their situation models. Several issues that are the focus of current research include understanding the factors that influence coherence across documents, creating interventions to help students become aware of multiple document challenges, and improving our understanding of the developmental trajectory for learning these skills and how they build upon more basic literacy skills.

International audience

This study examined the effect of the number of citations attributed to documents on third year psychology students' selection of bibliographical references. Our main assumption was that students would take high numbers of citations as accessible relevance cues and use them heuristically to facilitate decision making, potentially bypassing deeper relevance assessment based on semantic processing. Experiment 1 presented the students with a reference selection task while manipulating the number of citations attributed to references, and found that the number of citations had a strong impact on reference selection. Moreover, the effect was independent from topic familiarity and even from students' prior knowledge of what the number of citations meant. Experiment 2 used eye-tracking data to show that this "big number" effect was contingent upon the participants fixating the numbers of citations attributed to documents. Experiment 3 manipulated the semantic relevance of references to the search topic, and demonstrated that the less relevant references were 3 times more likely to be selected when they came with a high number of citations. Overall, the study shows that the number of citations significantly influences students' selections, competing with the semantic relevance of references. Implications for the teaching of online search skills are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

This paper discusses the skills required for students to be able to access, comprehend and use documents independently, both in print and online. We start with a simple example in order to illustrate the demands posed by document-based school tasks on students’ reading literacy skills. We then propose a descriptive framework to broaden the construct of reading literacy so as to account for document processes, including search, evaluation and multiple-text integration. We review some studies illustrating the challenges of these processes for primary school students, and we discuss extant research investigating the effectiveness of instructional interventions.

International audience; This study aimed at investigating attentional mechanisms in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) by analysing how visual search processes are modulated by normal and obsession-related distracting information in OCD patients and whether these modulations differ from those observed in healthy people. OCD patients were asked to search for a target word within distractor words that could be orthographically similar to the target, semantically related to the target, semantically related to the most typical obsessions/compulsions observed in OCD patients, or unrelated to the target. Patients' performance and eye movements were compared with those of individually matched healthy controls. In controls, the distractors that were visually similar to the target mostly captured attention. Conversely, patients' attention was captured equally by all kinds of distractor words, whatever their similarity with the target, except obsession-related distractors that attracted patients' attention less than the other distractors. OCD had a major impact on the mostly subliminal mechanisms that guide attention within the search display, but had much less impact on the distractor rejection processes that take place when a distractor is fixated. Hence, visual search in OCD is characterized by abnormal subliminal, but not supraliminal, processing of obsession-related information and by an impaired ability to inhibit task-irrelevant inputs.