TOWARDS MORE EFFECTIVE INFORMATION USE: FOSTERING COGNITIVE INTEGRATION VIA THE HUMANCOMPUTER INTERF

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TOWARDS MORE EFFECTIVE INFORMATION USE FOSTERING
COGNITIVE INTEGRATION VIA THE HUMAN-COMPUTER
INTERFACESheila O. DennSchool of Information
and Library Science, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
Abstract
Theoretical Framework
Approach and Process
Expected Results
Much of the work of information science is
concerned with the related notions of
information-seeking and information use. A great
deal of progress has been made in the area of
information-seeking at the same time, the rate
at which new infor-mation becomes available is
phenomenal. The combination of better access and
ever greater amounts of information makes
This research will build on knowledge in
cognitive and educational psychology to propose
interface components specifically geared toward
helping the user increase her understanding of
information, along with methods for testing such
components.
The notions of use and understanding are
related directly to the cognitive proces-ses and
states of the user. Drawing on Blooms Taxonomy
of Educational Objectives (Bloom, et al., 1964),
one piece of evidence that a user understands the
information she has discovered is the ex-tent to
which that user can take her exis-ting knowledge
and combine it with new information to formulate
new knowledge and understanding of the topic at
hand. As the cognitive state of integration that
this work attempts to foster in the user shares
many properties with learning, the primary
theoretical frameworks driving this research have
been drawn from educa-tional and cognitive
psychology. There is, of course, no grand theory
of cog-nitive integration upon which to base the
development of interfaces to better support such
integration, but there are a number of frameworks
that have been developed over the years that can
contribute to under-standing cognitive
integration and influ-ence this work. The idea of
cognitive load is a powerful one, because
certainly one does not want to develop interfaces
that engender extraneous cognitive load of their
own (Feinberg Murphy, 2000 Sweller, et al.,
1990). Two related theoreti-cal approaches that
are useful are the scaf-
The interface testing should show whether the
particular interface component (the scratchpad)
has any impact on the ability of users to
synthesize information encountered into an
understanding that facilitates decision-making.
If the testing shows an improvement in
understanding for the subjects using the
prototype interface, then this would be a basis
for recommending that this type of component be
included in interfaces to complex information.
it imperative to study ways that this information
can be rendered under-standable and usable to
information-seekers.
Discussion
A review of the literature is ongoing to
syn-thesize the state of our knowledge about
hu-man cognitive and learning processes into
principles that can be applied to user
interfa-ces. From these principles, one
particular component (a scratchpad space that
will provide cut/paste capability and can serve
as a more advanced history function) will be
implemented and tested. The testing will consist
of guiding test sub-jects through a series of
complex information tasks in the area of career
planning based on US government statistical data.
The proto-type interface will be tested against a
stan-dard browser interface to see if subjects
dif-fer in the range, quantity, and quality of
statis-tical data they employ to back up their
decision-making.
The goal of this work is to lay a groundwork for
future research designed to explore and more
fully explicate the relationship between
cognitive psychology and human-computer
interaction in information-intensive
environ-ments and domains. In the
Background
The avenue through which users interact with
information is the user interface. While
usability is a major focus of human-computer
interaction research, it does not, in general,
address the extent to which particular interface
features may help or hinder the users ability to
understand and appropriately use the information
with which she is interacting. Understanding
information integration as a cognitive pro-cess
and understanding the kinds of tasks that depend
on information integration is crucial to the
ability to build interfaces that support those
processes and tasks. One important question that
remains to be answered is how human-computer
interac-tion and cognitive research intersect in
other words, what implications does the cognitive
process of information integra-tion, as it occurs
in the human brain, have for the design of
information systems that can offload some of the
burden of that integration from the user?
long term, this work is envisioned as being the
first step toward building a solid theoreti-cal
and experimental foundation upon which future
work in the design of human-computer interfaces
and visualizations for complex information can be
based.
Feinberg, S., and Murphy, M. (2000). Applying
cognitive load theory to the design of web-based
instruction. Proceedings of the 18th Annual ACM
International Conference on Computer
Documentation Technology and Teamwork.
353-360. Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., and Kirsh, D.
(2000). Distributed cognition Toward a new
foundation for human-computer interaction
research. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human
Interaction 72. 174-196 Hutchins, E. (1995).
Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA MIT
Press. Norman, D.A. (1993). Things that make us
smart Defending human attributes in the age of
the machine. Reading, MA Addison Wesley
Longman. Sweller, J., Chandler, P., Tierney, P.,
and Cooper, G. (1990). Cognitive load as a factor
in the structuring of technical material. Journal
of Experimental Psychology General 119. 176-192.
folding theory of Clark (Clark, 1997) and the
distributed cognition model (Hollan, et al.,
2000 Hutchins, 1995 Norman, 1993.)
References
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