In present-day knowledge societies, competent reading involves the integration of information from multiple sources into a coherent, meaningful representation of a topic, issue, or situation. This article reviews research and theory concerning the comprehension of multiple textual resources, focusing especially on linkages recently established between dimensions of epistemic beliefs and multiple-text comprehension. Moreover, a proposed model incorporates epistemic beliefs into a theoretical framework for explaining multiple-text comprehension, specifying how and why different epistemic belief dimensions may be linked to the comprehension and integration of multiple texts. Also discussed is the need for further research concerning mediational mechanisms, causality, and generalizability. Are sun rays healthy or harmful? Can mobile phones actually cause brain cancer? Is global warming due to mankind's activities or to natural causes? In present-day knowledge societies, individuals seeking to answer such questions, on behalf of themselves or others, indeed have a wealth of information resources to draw on. Those resources may be available through traditional print and broadcasting technologies or through new information and communication technologies, such as the Internet. In any case, attempts to provide wellfounded answers require that individuals synthesize or integrate information from source materials expressing diverse Correspondence should be addressed to Ivar Bråten,

This article investigated whether students' ability to reason with and about documentary evidence is influenced by the composition of the document set they study. Two groups of college students read sets of history documents containing a variety of document types (e.g., historian essays, participant accounts). One group was also given primary documents, and the other group received additional historian essays that cited the primary documents. The students' task was to read the documents, rate their usefulness and trustworthiness, and write a short opinion essay on the controversy described in the documents. Results revealed that the presence of primary documents influenced how students rated the documents and on which criteria they based this interpretation. These results suggest that exposing students to a variety of document types, especially primary documents, within a reasoning task changes how students represent and reason about documents and historical problems.

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In two experiments, we examined the role of discrepancy on readers' text processing of and memory for the sources of brief news reports. Each story included two assertions that were attributed to different sources. We manipulated whether the second assertion was either discrepant or consistent with the first assertion. On the basis of the discrepancy-induced source comprehension (D-ISC) assumption, we predicted that discrepant stories would promote deeper processing and better memory for the sources conveying the messages, as compared to consistent stories. As predicted, readers mentioned more sources in summaries of discrepant stories, recalled more sources, made more fixations, and displayed longer gaze times in source areas when reading discrepant than when reading consistent stories. In Experiment 2, we found enhanced memory for source-content links for discrepant stories even when intersentential connectors were absent, and regardless of the reading goals. Discussion was focused on discrepancies as one mechanism by which readers are prompted to encode source-content links more deeply, as a method of integrating disparate pieces of information into a coherent mental representation of a text.Keywords Discrepancies . Eye movements . Memory . Sources . Text comprehensionThere is an old saying that "there are two sides to every story." This saying describes the observation that, in everyday contexts, we are frequently presented with and must comprehend uncertain or tentative events, which have resulted in multiple interpretations. In newspaper reports, for example, a single event is often described (e.g., a fire in a building) that may be attributed to various reasons (sabotage vs. electrical malfunction), either within the same report or across several different ones. These kinds of discrepancies are notably different from simple errors in reporting; in fact, they are part and parcel of the state of affairs of the situation. In the present example, the cause of the fire may have been uncertain at the time that the newspapers were printed, investigation may be ongoing, and so on.The present experiments were designed to give some clarity regarding the cognitive mechanisms that operate during the comprehension of discrepancies like these when they appear in texts, particularly when different sources are associated with the conflicting pieces of information (e.g., "The detective claims that the fire in the building was due to sabotage. However, a journalist asserts that the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction."). In the present work, we argue that comprehending discrepancies of this kind requires that readers attend to-and at times rememberwho said what. More colloquially, in the event that readers have accessed a discrepancy during reading, are they more Mem Cogn (2012) 40:450-465 DOI 10.3758/s13421-011-0160-6 likely to pay attention to and remember the "two sides to the story," and if so, why? Do readers regularly monitor their understandings of texts and notice when texts present conflicting...