Cognitive mechanisms in sensemaking: A qualitative user study

Zhang, Pengyi; Soergel, Dagobert

doi:10.1002/asi.24221

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 55 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…It is very likely that this is the stage when searchers acquired and accumulated most knowledge. Further research should focus on this sub-process to examine how searchers acquire new knowledge to add to existing knowledge structure and how their knowledge structure may change, as discussed by Vakkari [18] and Zhang and Soergel [63].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterising users’ task completion process in learning-related tasks:A search pace model

Liu

Song

Hansen

2021

Journal of Information Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study investigated users’ searching, reading and writing interactions and their activity transitions during task completion process when users were collecting information for learning-related search tasks. Task completion process was defined as the process users started to search till the time when they have collected enough information to accomplish the search tasks. The data analysis was conducted from a new process perspective through synthesising macro- and micro-process levels. Four evenly distributed stages were divided according to the total task completion time in each search session. Our results demonstrated that users generally experienced three sub-processes during task completion process: exploration, accumulation and composition/reporting. Exploration sub-process is basically the first quarter of the total task completion time, during which users often issue more queries and visit more search engine result pages (SERPs) to collect information, and the dominant activity transition is switching between searching and reading; accumulation sub-process is mainly the second and third quarters of the total task completion time, during which they visit more unique content pages, have more revisits per content page, and they switch between reading and writing activities frequently; the last stage is composition/reporting sub-process, which is dominated by writing, and users often switch between writing and reading, and between writing and searching. Based on these findings, we propose a search pace model to describe how users proceed from the beginning to the end of task completion process in these three sub-processes. The methodology applied has been proved to be effective to examine users’ interaction behaviours from the process perspective on both the micro- and macro-levels. The findings of this article help us understand how users proceed their dynamic searching, reading and writing behaviours for learning-related tasks, and also have implications for the design of search systems that support learning-related tasks.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterising users’ task completion process in learning-related tasks:A search pace model

Liu

Song

Hansen

2021

Journal of Information Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Comparison can further help people recognize common features shared across items or identify features that distinguish them [15,38,77,78]. Some suggest that a comparison mechanism allows users to create broad concept categories by grouping similar concepts in either a bottom-up approach (clustering) or a top-down approach (assigning existing categories) [84]. In HCI research, creating design elements or affordances for easier information consumption is not new.…”

Section: Designing For Information Consumption Through Comparisonmentioning

confidence: 99%

NewsComp: Facilitating Diverse News Reading through Comparative Annotation

Bhuiyan,

Lee,

Goyal

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To support efficient, balanced news consumption, merging articles from diverse sources into one, potentially through crowdsourcing, could alleviate some hurdles. However, the merging process could also impact annotators' attitudes towards the content. To test this theory, we propose comparative news annotation; that is, annotating similarities and differences between a pair of articles. By developing and deploying NewsComp-a prototype system-we conducted a between-subjects experiment (N = 109) to examine how users' annotations compare to experts', and how comparative annotation affects users' perceptions of article credibility and quality. We found that comparative annotation can marginally impact users' credibility perceptions in certain cases; it did not impact perceptions of quality. While users' annotations were not on par with experts', they showed greater precision in finding similarities than in identifying disparate important statements. The comparison process also led users to notice differences in information placement and depth, degree of factuality/opinion, and empathetic/inflammatory language use. We discuss implications for the design of future comparative annotation tasks. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); Empirical studies in HCI .

show abstract

“…Sensemaking is the process of forming meaningful representations and utilizing them to develop comprehension, thereby enabling an individual to plan, make decisions, tackle problems, and generally act in an informed manner (Pirolli & Russell, 2011; Zhang & Soergel, 2019). The overall process of sensemaking can be seen as iterations of “information seeking–sensemaking” and may lead to three kinds of outcomes that update the conceptual structure: accretion, tuning or radical restructuring (Zhang & Soergel, 2014).…”

Section: Literature Review and Hypothesis Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negativity Bias During Information Seeking, Processing, and Sensemaking about a Policy Debate: An Eye‐tracking Experiment

Liu,

Zhang,

Zhang

2023

Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Tech

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Negativity bias is the tendency to pay more attention and give more weight to negative information than positive information. This study explored how negativity bias affects information search, processing, and sensemaking when reading news articles on controversial topics. We conducted an eye‐tracking experiment with 43 participants who sought and read positive and negative articles about the three‐child policy debate. We measured their eye movements, cognitive load, attitude change, and sensemaking outcomes. We found that: (1) negativity bias occurs in both information search and information processing, and the outcomes of sensemaking also tend to show negative changes; (2) reading positive articles increase cognitive load more than reading negative articles; (3) gender and prior attitude have an influence on negativity bias; (4) people use different cognitive strategies when making sense of positive and negative information. This paper contributes to a better understanding of negativity bias in information seeking, processing, and sensemaking, which can help design news systems that adapt to readers' needs, and suggests people view information objectively.

show abstract

Cognitive mechanisms in sensemaking: A qualitative user study

Cited by 18 publications

References 55 publications

Characterising users’ task completion process in learning-related tasks:A search pace model

Characterising users’ task completion process in learning-related tasks:A search pace model

NewsComp: Facilitating Diverse News Reading through Comparative Annotation

Negativity Bias During Information Seeking, Processing, and Sensemaking about a Policy Debate: An Eye‐tracking Experiment

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About