The role of tasks in the comprehension of multiple texts: a scoping review / El papel de las tareas en la comprensión de múltiples textos: una revisión exploratoria

Abstract

Although research on multiple-document integration is expanding, important questions remain insufficiently explored. This scoping review aims to provide an organized overview of these knowledge gaps. Specifically, it examines the wide variety of tasks used in recent literature to both promote and measure the processing of multiple documents, and explores how task instructions influence this processing, jointly considering the assessment method applied and whether texts are complementary or contradictory. Analysing 18 recent studies, the review highlights the diversity and frequency of task instructions used. Furthermore, it aligns with previous research, showing that expressive tasks are more commonly employed to measure integration than receptive activities. Importantly, the findings suggest that instructions encouraging across-text connections may facilitate the integration of complementary documents, while argumentative tasks might offer an advantage for processing contradictory texts — particularly when specific assessment methods are used. These insights pave the way for future experimental studies to directly test these patterns and deepen our understanding of multiple-document comprehension.