Constructed responses as a window into strategic processing: the role of prompts in multiple-document reading

This study investigates how learners’ constructed responses, specifically typed thoughts prompted during multiple-document reading, reveal cognitive strategies used to integrate and make sense of complex information. Undergraduate students (n = 73) read four texts on climate change and generated constructed responses to one of three types of prompts: self-explanation, source evaluation, and think-aloud. Readers’ constructed responses were coded and analyzed for evidence of key comprehension strategies: paraphrasing, bridging, elaboration, source evaluation, and comprehension monitoring. Results revealed that self-explanation prompts promoted paraphrasing and bridging; source evaluation prompts encouraged bridging, elaboration, and sourcing; and think-aloud prompts supported comprehension monitoring. Although only comprehension monitoring predicted improved performance on multiple-document comprehension measures, the constructed responses nonetheless provided a window into students’ strategic processes while reading. Insights gleaned from the constructed responses highlight their unique power to reveal the mental processes that underlie reading comprehension and to inform the design of more effective instructional scaffolds.