Introduction

Abstract

This book adopts a cognitive perspective to provide breadth and depth to state-of-the-art research related to understanding, analyzing, predicting, and improving one of the most prominent and important classes of behavior of modern humans: information search. This book is timely as the broader research area of cognitive computing and cognitive technology has recently attracted much attention, and there has been a surge in interest to develop systems that are more compatible with human cognitive abilities. The goal of this book is to introduce a coherent set of theories, methods, computational models, and empirical results that highlight how cognitively compatible systems can and should be developed to improve information search by humans. This edited book includes contributions from cognitive, social, information, and computer scientists around the globe, including researchers from Europe (France, Netherlands, Germany), the USA, and Asia (India, Japan), providing their unique but coherent perspectives to the set of core issues and questions most relevant to our current understanding of information search behavior. We expect this book will be of interest to information scientists, psychologists, and computer scientists.