Overview
The Skills of Document Use examines functional literacy from a psychological standpoint. It offers a comprehensive discussion of the cognitive skills involved in reading, comprehending and making use of complex documents. Understanding such skills is important at times when printed and online information systems are being used more and more extensively for work, education and personal development. It is also very important to understand how the Internet transforms the way we search, read and comprehend documents.The core purpose of the book is to inform research scientists, students and instructional designers about recent advances in the psychology of document comprehension. Whereas reading research has mostly focused on basic cognitive processes involved in simple comprehension tasks, this book extends the psychology of reading to more complex, real-life comprehension activities. The book draws a link between research areas usually separated: language psychology, on one hand, and Web design, on the other hand.
This will be of interest to students specializing in psychology, language, communication, and publishing. It will also be useful to all those who are involved in the training of literacy skills, or in the design of information systems accessible to a wide audience.
The first part covers issues related to expert text comprehension, document synthesis and information search. The second part examines the impact of new information technologies (e.g., hypertext, multimedia) on processes of comprehension and information use.
The work also attempts to bridge a gap between research in cognitive psychology and practical issues in the design and use of information systems. It invites the reader to a guided journey from theoretical models of text comprehension to concrete issues in the design and use of instructional technology.