home ›
research › csee
Cognition in Structured Electronic Environments
Overview
How do we assess if a source of information in the World Wide Web is
reliable? What strategies do we adopt to understand if a source contains
trustworthy information? The goal of this project is to explore a class of cognitive capabilities involved in information search as a prominent case of skills relying on ecological regularities and simple heuristics. The rationale behind such a project is twofold. On the one hand, recent literature on information search on the Web has failed to acknowledge the genuinely cognitive nature of these capacities. It seems, though, that the study of information search skills could provide fundamental insights into some of the basic principles involved in knowledge acquisition, decision making and social cognition. On the other hand, there is evidence suggesting that subjects exploit a number of simple cues in order to solve problems - like relevance and authority assessment - raised by information search tasks. The existence of cues of trustworthiness and reputation in the Web makes this case study an ideal area of investigation for heuristic decision strategies (as
information foraging models have recently proposed) and for specific biases in the assessment of reliability, trustworthiness and reputation. The expected outcome of this project is to provide a conceptual and methodological framework to orient further research on information search skills as a genuinely cognitive phenomenon and to contribute to a robust scientific foundation to applied research in this domain.
Coordinator
Prof
Nick Chater, University College London
Host
Funding
This project is supported by an individual
Marie Curie EIF fellowship (2006-2008).
Grant number:
MEIF-CT-2006-024460
Keywords
information search; information foraging; relevance; authority; trust; credibility; ecological rationality; heuristics.
Bibliographic database
latest additions
References
- Taraborelli, D. (2008)
How the Web is changing the way we trust, in: K. Waelbers, A. Briggle, P. Brey (Eds.), Current Issues in Computing and Philosophy, IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2008. (in press)
pdf full text
- Taraborelli, D. (2008)
Soft peer review. Social software and distributed scientific evaluation
8th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems - COOP 08, Carry-le-Rouet, France, May 20-23, 2008.
pdf full text pdf slides
- Taraborelli, D. (2007)
Soft deference. How the Web is changing the way we trust
ECAP 2007: 5th European Computing and Philosophy Conference, Twente, June 21-23, 2007
pdf extended abstract
- Taraborelli, D. (2007)
How not to be fooled by cardboard rabbits. Heuristics for epistemic reliability judgments in the World Wide Web
Persuasive 07: 2nd International Conference on Persuasive Technology, Stanford University, Stanford University, April 27-28, 2007. (poster)
pdf full text
- Taraborelli, D. (2006)
Simple heuristics in information search: How to measure authority?
Invited talk, UCLIC Seminar (UCL Interaction Centre), London, May 10, 2006
- Taraborelli, D. (2006)
Simple heuristics for authority assessment
Invited talk, "La ciencia como proceso cultural", Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades (CEIICH) - UNAM, Mexico City, June 2005
research |
papers & communications |
teaching |
erp |
links |
tools |
cv |
contact