Differences between experts and novices when reading with navigational table of contents

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the difference between experts and novices when reading with navigational table of contents (N-TOC). Experts refer to readers with high level of domain knowledge; novices refer to readers with low level of domain knowledge. Design/methodology/approach The authors performed a controlled experiment of three reading tasks (including fact finding task, partial understanding task, and full-text understanding task) on an N-TOC system for 35 post-graduates of Wuhan University who have rich experience in reading with N-TOC. Participants’ domain knowledge was measured by pre-experiment questionnaires; reading performance data including score, time, navigation use, and evaluation of N-TOC were collected. Findings The results showed that there was significant difference in neither navigation use nor participants’ evaluation, but domain experts performed significantly better in both score and time of all tasks than domain novices, which revealed an “illusion of control” phenomenon that rich experience in reading with N-TOC enabled domain novices to achieve the same performance as domain experts. In addition, this research found that N-TOC was not suitable for domain novices to solve full-text understanding task because of “cognitive overload” phenomenon. Originality/value This study makes a good contribution to the literature on the effect of domain knowledge on reading performance during N-TOC reading and how to provide better digital reading service in the field of library science and information science.

Cognitive differences between readers attentive and inattentive to task-related information: an eye-tracking study

“…Domain knowledge has been considered as important factors in influencing reading behavior (Lu et al. , 2018b).…”

“…, 2017; Lu et al. , 2018a, b). This study focused on investigating cognitive difference in various objective difficulties.…”

“…After data filtering, since the eye-tracker provides fixation data that consists of screen coordinates only, we obtained user fixating content of this text automatically, such as which paragraph of text area, and identified fixation data on task-related information, following a reader fixating content tracking method in complex and dynamic interface (Lu et al. , 2018a, b). Then, participants were placed into attentive reader group or inattentive reader group according to whether the duration of the fixation on task-related information exceeds 200 msec.…”

“…Domain knowledge has been considered as important factors in influencing reading behavior (Lu et al, 2018b). Participants were denominated as domain experts if his/her major belongs to the domain of information management, computer or mathematics and statistics, since the topic of experimental material is related.…”

“…, 2016; Lu et al. , 2018a, b), with few researches concentrating on attentive readers and inattentive readers. Particularly, comparing their cognitive differences contributes to identifying inattentive readers effectively, and then can propose targeted reading helps.…”