Tarchi Christian, Ruffini Costanza, Pecini Chiara
Department of Education, Languages, Intercultures, Literatures and Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy.
Front Psychol. 2021 Sep 27;12:716463. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.716463. eCollection 2021.
In the present-day knowledge society, people need to critically comprehend information across multiple sources that express diverse and contradictory viewpoints. Due to the complexity associated with this process, an important role can be played by Executive Functions, that is, cognitive control processes used to regulate mental functioning and behavior when automatized elaborations are not sufficient. The aim of this article is to review existing research on the roles of executive functions when reading from multiple texts. To identify the appropriate studies, we conducted a search in the following databases: Web of science, Scopus, PsycInfo, Eric. The search string was created by combining the terms used in past literature reviews on executive functions and multiple-texts comprehension. From the total number of 4,877 records identified, seven articles met all the inclusion criteria and were analyzed. Given the scarcity of studies on the topic, we decided to examine also eight articles reporting indirect evidence about the association between executive functions and multiple-text comprehension. Our review revealed that the study of the association between executive functions and multiple-texts comprehension is underdeveloped. The results seem to suggest that working memory is involved in surface comprehension, whereas results about sourcing and intertextual integration processes are mixed. Indirect evidence suggests that other executive functions, such as planning or monitoring, may be involved when learning from multiple texts. More research on this topic is needed given the increasing complexity of the contexts in which reading activities take place.
在当今的知识社会中，人们需要批判性地理解来自多个来源的信息，这些信息表达了不同且相互矛盾的观点。由于这一过程的复杂性，执行功能可以发挥重要作用，即当自动化加工不足时，用于调节心理功能和行为的认知控制过程。本文的目的是综述关于从多篇文本阅读时执行功能作用的现有研究。为了确定合适的研究，我们在以下数据库进行了检索：科学网、Scopus、PsycInfo、教育资源信息中心。检索词是通过结合以往关于执行功能和多篇文本理解的文献综述中使用的术语创建的。从识别出的4877条记录总数中，有7篇文章符合所有纳入标准并进行了分析。鉴于该主题的研究较少，我们还决定研究另外8篇报告执行功能与多篇文本理解之间关联的间接证据的文章。我们的综述表明，执行功能与多篇文本理解之间关联的研究尚不完善。结果似乎表明，工作记忆参与表层理解，而关于信息来源和互文整合过程的结果则好坏参半。间接证据表明，在从多篇文本学习时，其他执行功能，如计划或监控，可能也会涉及。鉴于阅读活动发生的背景日益复杂，需要对该主题进行更多研究。
