Written Language

My research work deals with the cognitive underpinnings of reading literacy and information technology use. I am especially interested in the processes of information search, hypertext navigation, as well as the evaluation and integration of multiple information sources. Part of my research deals with children and teenagers’ acquisition of these abilities, whereas another part investigates young adults’ reading behavior in various task contexts. I am a co-author of the RESOLV model of purposeful reading (Britt et al., 2018).

Among other projects, I serve as a co-principal investigator of the SELEN project funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (http://bapn.univ-paris8.fr/anr/).

See details about my career in the CV below.

Download my Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (Habilitation as a research director) report (2001).

• Guillaume de Pereyra (2012-2016). Lecture et compréhension de textes contradictoires par les adolescents : Représentation et prise en compte des sources d’information.
• Rahmi Putri Ranhkuti (2016-2020), Usages problématiques d’Internet à l’adolescence : Facteurs prédictifs et Stratégies de prévention (codirection avec Ludovic Gicquel).
• Julie Ayroles (2017-2020) : Apprentissage de la lecture fonctionnelle chez l’élève de cycle 3 (codirection avec Anna Potocki).
• Deslande Liboutchi Peppe (2018-), Attention partagée et compréhension de textes : effet du type d’interruption d’attention sur les performances des lecteurs (codirection avec Nicolas Louveton).
• Yann Dyoniziak (2019-), Acquisition des stratégies de lecture à l’adolescence (codirection avec Anna Potocki).
• Delphine Oger (2020-), Stratégies de compréhension pour l’apprentissage avec le numérique en classe de Sixième (codirection avec Mylène Sanchiz).

Ayroles, J., Potocki, A., Ros, C., Cerdàn, R., Britt M.A., & Rouet, J.-F. (2021). Do You Know What You Are Reading For? Exploring the effects of a task model enhancement on Fifth Graders’ Purposeful Reading. Journal of Research In Reading.

Britt, M.A., Rouet, J.-F., & Durik, A. (2018). Literacy beyond text comprehension: A theory of purposeful reading. Taylor & Francis.

Macedo-Rouet, M., Potocki, A., Scharrer, L., Ros, C., Stadtler, M., Salmerón, L., & Rouet, J.F. (2019). How good is this page? Benefits and limits of prompting on teenagers’ assessment of Web information quality. Reading Research Quarterly, 54(3), 299-321.

Rouet, J.-F. (2006). The skills of document use: from text comprehension to Web-based learning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Rouet, J.-F., Britt, M.A., & Durik, A. (2017, in press). RESOLV: Readers’ models of reading contexts and tasks. Educational Psychologist.

Rouet, J.-F., Saux, G., Ros, C., Stadtler, M., Vibert, N., & Britt, M.A. (2020). Inside Document models: The role of source attributes in integrating multiple text contents. Discourse Processes, 58(1), 60-79.

I have completed a psychology doctorate at the University of Poitiers (1991). My advisor was Professor Stéphane Ehrlich (founder of the psychology research center in Poitiers and author, among others, of “Apprentissage et Mémoire chez l’Homme”, (Learning and memory in humans) 1974). I then spent a 2-year post-doc at the University of Pittsburgh with Professor Charles Perfetti. (1991-1993), and another year as a post-doc at the National institute for Informatics (INRIA) in Andre Bisseret’s lab (1993-1994). During those experiences I developed an interest in people’s interactions with the then-emerging paradigm of “digital reading”.

I was hired as a research associate at CNRS in 1994 (as part of the current section 26 “Brain, Cognition and Behavior”, within CNRS’ National Institute for Biological Sciences) on a position titled “Cognitive processes, Learning and Education”. I joined the Language and Communication Laboratory (Poitiers, currently Center for Research on Cognition and Learning), whose director at the time was Eric Espéret. I became the leader of the research team “Language comprehension and production” (2000-2003) before I took up the position of director of the research center from 2004 to 2011. I am currently a member of the Written Language team of CeRCA.

In addition to my activities within the research center, I have been involved since 2006 in the Programme for the International Student Assessment (PISA, OECD), which assesses 15 year-old students’ abilities every three years in more than 70 countries. Within this project, I serve as the chairman of the international expert group that is in charge of designing the reading literacy assessment for the 2018 edition of the PISA study. I have also chaired an expert group as part of the OECD’s PIAAC study of adult skills.