RESOLV: Readers' Representation of Reading Contexts and Tasks

Analyzing and Integrating Models of Multiple Text Comprehension

“…Overall, the featured models can be conceptualized as explaining the challenges students face when processing conflicting information (Braasch & Bra ten, 2017/this issue) or information that counters their existing beliefs (Richter & Maier, 2017/this issue). The models also consider the influence of the specific task (List & Alexander, 2017/this issue) or particular context (Rouet, Britt, & Durik, 2017/this issue) on students' actions. In this introduction, these models are conceptualized in terms of their commonalities and distinctions to better understand what is known about MTC and what still needs further elaboration.…”

“…For instance, Braasch and Bra ten (2017/this issue) suggest that factors external to the learner, specifically the presence of conflict in text, serve as the initiators of evaluative text processing and students' attendance to source information, such as the author. Rouet et al (2017/this issue) adopt a more moderated stance, considering students' representations of both internal and external contextual factors as driving MTC. Likewise, Richter and Maier (2017/this issue) consider learners' engagement in verification to arise as a consequence of the interaction between learners' existing knowledge or beliefs and information in text.…”

Cognitive Load and Learning in the Study of Multiple Documents

“…the CL-MDR provides a measurement instrument that is well anchored in cognitive load theory (Sweller et al, 2011;Leppink and Van den Heuvel, 2015; and previous research on the measurement of cognitive load (Leppink et al, 2013(Leppink et al, , 2014Lafleur et al, 2015) as well as in contemporary theory on multiple documents reading such as MD-TRACE (Rouet and Britt, 2011) and models of purposeful reading such as RESOLV (Rouet et al, 2017). Secondly, the current study provides empirical support for a four-factor model in a carefully designed randomized controlled experiment: not providing students with the opportunity to go back to the texts when writing an essay about these texts clearly increases extraneous cognitive load (i.e., split attention) but not intrinsic cognitive load.…”

“…The third step of this model involves reading and learning from the textual material. Related to the latter, the documents model framework (Perfetti et al, 1999;Rouet, 2006;Britt and Rouet, 2012) and recent frameworks of purposeful reading (Rouet et al, 2017) specify the types of representations needed when reading multiple documents. In accordance with these frameworks, readers can represent information about the document as an entity, which is referred to as a document node.…”

“…Using the principles from previous work in cognitive load measurement (Leppink et al, 2013(Leppink et al, , 2014, MD-TRACE (Rouet and Britt, 2011), and recent developments of purposeful reading frameworks (Rouet et al, 2017), we developed an instrument to capture sources of intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load experienced by students while performing the task. Items were formulated such that they cover the main processes involved when solving a task based on the reading of multiple documents-that is, reading and comprehending the single texts and creating the interconnected model from the multiple texts, as well as dealing with instructions and task demands-and as such reflect different sources of cognitive load.…”