Abstract

The study aimed at analyzing the synthesis writing of students belonging to two different disciplinary communities. Participants were 128 Architecture and 116 Psychology students, who were given three texts on the problem of housing for the elderly, a relevant topic from both psychological and architectural perspective. After reading the three texts, participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: writing a synthesis of the three texts, underlining and sequencing the most important ideas in the texts, and re-reading the texts. Following the tasks, participants' comprehension of the texts was assessed. From multivariate analyses of covariance (MANCOVA), a principal effect of the Faculty on both synthesis writing and text comprehension emerged.