Amanda Spink

Human Cognition and Social Behavior

Alexander’s words set the scene for exploring more about the broad nature and attributes of information behavior. In previous chapters we explored how Information behavior emerged in early humans as an evolved cognitive mechanism with instinctive and environmental dimensions underpinned by a motivation to control motivation to control the environment. We now focus more closely on the human cognitive and social level in Fig. 2.2 that highlights Information behavior as a complex phenomenon with many broad attributes and dimensions that we are only just beginning to understand.

Temporal and Contextual Evaluation of Background Knowledge Discovery for Short Text Classification

Background Knowledge BK plays an essential role in machine learning for short-text and non-topical classification. In this paper the authors present and evaluate two Information Retrieval techniques used to assemble four sets of BK in the past seven years. These sets were applied to classify a commercial corpus of search queries by the apparent age of the user. Temporal and contextual evaluations were used to examine results of various classification scenarios providing insight into choice, significance and range of tuning parameters. The evaluations also demonstrated the impact of the dynamic Web collection on classification results, and the advantages of Automatic Query Expansion AQE vs. basic search. The authors discuss other results of this research and its implications on the advancement of short text classification.

Key Propositions and Conclusions

This book has broadly explored many diverse and interesting issues, and has proposed new theories and ideas. At the beginning of the book we said that such a treatise will probably raise more important and interesting questions than will be answered. Raising important and interesting questions without providing all the answers may be frustrating for the reader (and the author), but does provide a necessary and critical key beginning for confronting future research challenges.

Information Behavior Sub-processes

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington was obviously a phenomenologist. In the vein of Eddington, this book is a first stab at devising theories to account for origins and reconstructing the creature. But how do we reconstruct such a creature, how do we account for its origins and say what it has become? Based on what we know so far about the origins and development of information behavior, we have a theoretical framework with evolutionary, instinctive, socio-cognitive and lifetime developmental dimensions.

Instinct Versus Environment

Blumberg’s words provide a valuable insight into the latest thinking on the role of instinct and environment in determining human behavior. A key issue for human behaviorists is examining how instinct versus environment shape human behavior (Blumberg, 2005). The concept of behavior and the role of instinct and what it means has been a major debate in the behavioral sciences.

Supporting Information Behavior over the Ages

As Pirolli reminds us, many forces shaped the emergence of information behavior and many artifacts were developed over the centuries to support information behavior in different cultures . Information behavior has been an important aspect of human behavior from early humans such as Homo sapiens and also for the people of today.

Information Behavior Framework

As McBrearty and Brooks (2000) argue above, knowledge sharing and human information behaviors originated in early humans and are not just a twentieth century phenomenon. However in our twenty-first century information society when we think about our behavior we do not generally think about our information-related behavior. When using our information behavior abilities such as information finding, organizing and using, with all the benefits they entail, we often think more about the technologies such as the Internet or Web that are designed to support our information behaviors.