Influences beyond the page: Walter Kintsch’s impact on multiple document comprehension and mentoring in research

In this commentary, I aim to explore two enduring influences of Walter Kintsch, one scientific and one personal: his impact on the subfield of multiple document comprehension and his influence on my approach to mentoring junior researchers. Throughout his career, Walter primarily focused on understanding how individuals comprehend individual texts, where a single author typically conveys a coherent and comprehensive message. However, as I shall review, his influence transcends this domain and extends to efforts aimed at deciphering how people understand and integrate multiple documents from different authors, that often provide complementary or conflicting messages.