The cognitive viewpoint is concerned with the dynamic and interactive processing of information. The viewpoint is based on human involvement, e.g., the generator
Fig. 1. Ingwersen’s holistic cognitive model of IR interaction.
of information, the intermediary, and the recipient/user of information. The pro-cessing of information goes from the generator of the information towards the recipient of the information, with the purpose of causing an effect in the state of knowledge of the recipient. Hence, information is defi ned as that which changes a knowledge state. In addition, each of the involved agents in the information processing process is seen as individual recipients and generators. Individually, the recipients perceive the information according to their own model of the world.
The concept of an information need is defi ned as the outcome of a change in the state of knowledge which results in an ‘anomaly state of knowledge’ (ASK) [5].
The change that results in an ASK, which is a cognitive development internal to the user/recipient, is happening due to an external situation, e.g., a given work task situation. In other words, an external situation causes a change in the knowledge state and in the knowledge structure of the user/recipient, which results in an ASK. An ASK is the user’s recognition of an insuffi cient knowledge model which results in an information need, for instance, in order to reduce uncertainty. As the result of the impact of further externally added information, e.g., retrieved infor-mation, the information need may change or develop over time in order to satisfy the present problem situation as perceived by the recipient. This means that the concept of an information need, within the cognitive viewpoint, is understood as a dynamic and potentially developing concept – as indicated by the cognitive revo-lution presented by Robertson and Hancock-Beaulieu [30]. Basically, an informa-tion need is born out of a situainforma-tion, and may develop during the process of reach-ing the requirements of that situation. The user’s perception of an information need is thus triggered by the perception and interpretation of a given situation, a problem to be solved or a state of interest to be fulfi lled, under infl uence of the user’s current cognitive and emotional state. This state is affected by the cultural and social context within which the user acts.
The works of the four scholars show that the cognitive view to Information Science satisfi es a demand of a socio-cognitive oriented approach to IR. The schol-ars’ works defi ne the cognitive viewpoint to be about the processing of informa-tion. Quite often this has been (mis-)interpreted in a very narrow way, in terms of a strictly user/recipient viewpoint, concerned with the information processing from the sender to the user/recipient. Brookes’ ‘fundamental equation’ [15] has, for instance, often been understood in this restrained way in spite of his emphasis of the occurrence of cognitive processes “[a]t both ends of the channel...” [14, p. 195]. However, it is central to the viewpoint that both the generation and the perception of information are acts of information processing, just as the informa-tion processing depends on the actual agent’s world model. The latter statement implies that all of the involved agents also function as a recipient applying their own world model. This is due to the viewpoint’s basic notion of what information
32
is (the interpretation of ‘sense-data’), and its basic notion of what the informing effect on the recipient is (the change of knowledge structures/states). As such, the cognitive viewpoint is holistic by nature, as pointed out by Ingwersen [e.g., 25].
Ingwersen [27, p. 5] concludes, based on the changing roles of the involved agents in the IR scenario, that “[t]his interchange of [generator and recipient] positions makes the viewpoint a forceful theoretical foundation for IR interaction…”.
Afterword: The positioning of the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark As stated in the foreword Professor Ingwersen has been of importance not only to me, but to the fi eld of Information Science and the IR research community, too. And so has he been to the Royal School of Library and Information Science, Denmark. He has, as nobody before him, managed to position the Royal School as the world leading school in Library and Information Science. An achievement he has managed through his continuing advocacy for, and further development of the cognitive viewpoint. Every time he advocates for the cognitive viewpoint, that being via the publishing of journal and conference papers, and books, at pre-sentations or as invited keynote speaker, when submitting research applications, and carrying out research projects, supervising students, and by being a dedicated mentor (to many of us, world wide) he represents and positions the Royal School.
The Royal School is indebted to Professor Ingwersen. Hence it is a privilege that Professor Ingwersen continues as Professor Emeritus of the Royal School of Li-brary and Information Science, Denmark.
References
Almind, T.C. & Ingwersen, P. (1997). Informetric analyses on the world wide web: methodological approaches to ‘webometrics’. Journal of Documentation, 53(4), 404-426.
Belkin, N.J. & Robertson, S.E. (1976). Information science and the phenomenon of information. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, (27), 197-204.
Belkin, N.J. (1977). Internal knowledge and external information. In: de Mey, M., Pinxten, R., Poriau, M. and Vandamme, F., eds. International Workshop on the Cognitive Viewpoint. Ghent: University of Ghent, 187-194.
Belkin, N.J. (1978). Progress in documentation: information concepts for infor-mation science. Journal of Documentation, (43), 55-85.
Belkin, N.J. (1980). Anomalous states of knowledge as a basis for information retrieval. The Canadian Journal of Information Science, (5), 133-143.
Belkin, N.J. (1984). Cognitive models and information transfer. Social Science Infor-mation Studies, (4), 111-130.
Belkin, N.J. (1990). The cognitive viewpoint in information science. Journal of Information Science, (16), 11-15.
Belkin, N.J., Oddy, R. & Brooks, H. (1982). ASK for information retrieval: part I.
Background and theory. Journal of Documentation, (38)2, 61-71.
Belkin, N.J., Oddy, R. & Brooks, H. (1982). ASK for information retrieval: part II. Results of a design study. Journal of Documentation, (38)3, 145-164.
Belkin, N.J., Seeger, T. & Wersig, G. (1983). Distributed expert problem treat-ment as a model for information system analysis and design. Journal of Information Science, (5), 153-167.
Borlund, P. (2000). Evaluation of Interactive Information Retrieval Systems. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press. Doctoral Thesis, Åbo Akademi University.
Brookes, B.C. (1975). The fundamental problem of information science. In:
Horsnell, V., ed. Informatics 2. London: Aslib, 42-49.
Brookes, B.C. (1975). The fundamental equation of information science. In:
Problems of Information Science, FID 530. Moscow: VINITI, 115-130.
Brookes, B.C. (1977). The developing cognitive viewpoint in information science.
In: de Mey, M., Pinxten, R., Poriau, M. & Vandamme, F., eds. International Workshop on the Cognitive Viewpoint. Ghent: University of Ghent, 195-203.
Brookes, B.C. (1980). The foundation of information science: part I: philosophi-cal aspects. Journal of Information Science: Principles and Practice, 2, 125-133.
De Mey, M. (1977). The cognitive viewpoint: its development and its scope.
In: de Mey, M., Pinxten, R., Poriau, M., & Vandamme, F., eds. International Workshop on the Cognitive Viewpoint. Ghent: University of Ghent, xvi-xxxii.
De Mey, M. (1980). The relevance of the cognitive paradigm for information science, In: Harbo, O. & Kajberg, L., eds. Theory and application of information research. Proceedings of the 2nd International Research forum on Information Science.
London: Mansell, 49-61.
De Mey, M., Pinxten, R., Poriau, M., & Vandamme, F. (Editors). (1977). Interna-tional Workshop on the Cognitive Viewpoint. Ghent: University of Ghent.
Ellis, D. (1992). The physical and cognitive paradigms in information retrieval research. Journal of Documentation, 48(1), 45-64.
Hjortgaard Christensen, F. & Ingwersen, P. (1996). Online citation analysis: a methodological approach. Scientometrics, (37)1, 39-62.
Ingwersen, P. & Hjortgaard Christensen, F. (1997). Data set isolation for biblio-metric online analyses of research publications: fundamental methodologi-cal Issues. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, (48)3, 205-217.
Ingwersen, P. (1982). Search procedures in the library analysed from the cogni-tive point of view. Journal of Documentation, 38(3), 165-191.
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Ingwersen, P. (1984). A cognitive view of three selected online search facilities.
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Ingwersen, P. (1992). Information retrieval interaction. London: Taylor Graham.
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London: Springer Verlag, 101-110.
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elements of a cognitive IR theory. Journal of Documentation, 52(1), 3-50.
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Address of congratulating author:
PIA BORLUND
Royal School of Library and Information Science Fredrik Bajers Vej 7K
DK-9220 Aalborg East, Denmark Email: pb[at]iva.dk
Genre Searching: a Pragmatic Approach to Informa-tion Retrieval
Luanne Freund
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Abstract. This paper explores the idea of a pragmatic approach to informa-tion retrieval (IR), drawing upon the case of genre searching as a task-based information seeking strategy within a workplace setting. Making use of genre in IR systems is proposed as a means to strengthen pragmatic communication among the cognitive actors involved by building common ground, supporting joint action and increasing relevance1.
Keywords: information retrieval, genre, pragmatics
1 Introduction
The keyword matching approach to information retrieval makes use of syntactic and semantic features of texts to predict relevance. However, much of the mean-ing in human communication is determined outside the realm of the text per se, through pragmatics: the use and interpretation of language by individuals in con-text. While information retrieval research has begun to address aspects of context, user behaviour and information use, dubbed the “IR ecology” by Sparck-Jones [1], and mapped out as a research agenda by Ingwersen and Järvelin in The Turn [2], there is still little consideration of pragmatics as a model for IR interactions.
One way in which pragmatics is expressed in written communication is through the use of document genres: recognizable categories of texts that share common elements of form, content and communicative function.
This paper will explore the idea of a pragmatic approach to IR, drawing upon the case of genre searching as a task-based information seeking strategy. I propose that making use of genre in IR systems has the potential to strengthen pragmatic com-munication among the cognitive actors involved. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how task-genre relationships can be situated within the General Model of Information Seeking and Retrieval (IS&R) proposed by Ingwersen and Järvelin [2].
1 This paper is adapted from a talk given by the author at the University of Glasgow in October 2008.
36 2 Pragmatics and Information Retrieval
Pragmatics is the branch of linguistics concerned with language usage and the meaning that is derived from the relationships between the language, its users and the context of use [3]. Two examples of pragmatics at work are the ability to infer meaning from referential pronouns such as he, she or it, and from utterances that carry no implicit meaning, such as “my goodness!” by relying on shared context and mutually accepted patterns of interaction [4]. Cognitive pragmatics studies how hidden meaning is extracted from language through the workings of the mental inference mechanism and Socio-pragmatics studies the ways in which lan-guage use and interpretation are shaped by social norms [5].
One of the key ideas in pragmatics is that human communication is a social undertaking, or a Joint Action, according to Clark [6], which is based on a shared intentionality to communicate and a willingness to cooperate in achieving this goal [4]. Simply put, we assume that people are trying to communicate things that are meaningful and we make the effort to infer their intent, even when it is not obvi-ous. A closely related concept is that of common ground: “the sum of mutual, common or joint knowledge, beliefs and suppositions” [6] held between two or more people. Without common ground, it is very diffi cult to frame meaningful utterances or to infer meaning from them, so a prerequisite to effective commu-nication is the establishment of some shared awareness. Common ground can be established through shared experience, personal acquaintance, or membership in cultural or professional communities [6].
Sperber and Wilson [7] built upon these ideas to develop the communicative relevance principle. The central idea is that communicative acts carry the presump-tion of relevance: we expect people to communicate things that are informative and in some way connected to the context of what is going on around us, and we cooperate by interpreting what is said accordingly. Because human cognition is tuned to seek out the greatest possible effect for the smallest possible effort, people will tend to settle on the most effi cient interpretation that is closely related to the current context. Furthermore, information that is easier to process will have a greater chance of being relevant and producing a “contextual effect,” by chang-ing or addchang-ing to existchang-ing knowledge.
Pragmatics assumes that people have effi cient ways of communicating, inter-preting and extracting meaning and that they do this by relying heavily upon as-sumptions based on known or shared context and through situated inference.
It provides insight on how people focus their attention, construct meaning and distinguish between relevant and non-relevant information.
Current IR systems do little to support pragmatic channels of communica-tion. Interactions between authors and readers via IR systems tend to be heavily
mediated, asynchronous and remote. Document retrieval is carried out by reduc-ing documents and queries to tokens, which are stripped out of their context of creation and use. Similarly, the context of the cognitive actors is usually unknown and uncontrolled, so that common ground cannot be assumed. Drawing upon the discussion above, a pragmatic approach to IR might establish the following goals:
• Build retrieval algorithms that can take into account the functions and uses of information objects;
• Preserve and provide to the searcher evidence of the intents and context of creation of documents;
• Facilitate and make use of context and assumptions that are shared by au-thors, searchers and system designers;
• Minimize the cognitive effort of searchers when assessing relevance.
3 Genre Searching
One approach to strengthening the pragmatic dimension of information retrieval is to make better use of genre. Document genres are distinctive forms of commu-nicative acts that are recognizable within information use communities [8], [9], [10]
and which serve important pragmatic functions [5]. Authors make use of genre conventions to design information objects which can accomplish their goals and can be easily recognized, interpreted and used by their readers. From a socio-prag-matic perspective, we know that members of discourse communities are socialized to create and use specifi c genres for particular purposes and in certain situations [8] . Within these communities, genres help to establish common ground and shared intentionality between authors and readers. From the cognitive pragmatic perspective, genres are used to trigger sets of assumptions used to infer meaning, prime expectations of relevance, and provide cues to support reading and use.
Unger [5] argues that genres develop initially as cognitive pragmatic phenom-ena designed to support particular communication goals and later as communi-ties become accustomed to their use, they become established as socio-pragmatic phenomenon. Following Sperber and Wilson, it is possible to claim that genre use increases the relevance of information, because genre helps to make explicit how the document is meant to be used and the standardized features help users process the information with less cognitive effort [10].
Genre-based communication is not well supported in most IR systems to date, although it is an active area of research [11], [12]. Despite the lack of system support, genre searching is a common information seeking strategy. In a study of workplace information behaviour, I found that software engineers sought out particular genres as a shortcut to locate information suited to particular situations
38
and tasks [13]. Fig. 1 places genre searching in the context of a broader model of information behaviour developed for this domain. On the left are the categories of contextual factors found to infl uence the information access constraints and the information characteristics sought. On the right are the strategies used to fi nd the required information, one of which is genre searching.
To illustrate how this occurs, consider an engineer faced with the task of fi g-uring out how to install a new product. In this case, he is likely to be seeking information with particular characteristics: concrete, specifi c, sanctioned by the company, and containing instructions. As a member of this information use com-munity, he knows that these characteristics can be found in the product documen-tation genre, and so sets out to search for that genre. He has expecdocumen-tations of rel-evance and utility based on his familiarity with the genre, which also allows him to extract meaning effi ciently from the document. So, genres, which are informal and constructed categories of information objects within this community, are used as implicit short cuts to fi nding information objects with characteristic (level of specifi city, purpose, etc.) suited to particular situations. Tasks are related to genres because they determine which information characteristics are needed.
Considering this relationship between tasks and genres in the framework of the General Model of IS&R [2] helps to explain it further (Fig.2). On the right of the Fig. 2 is the organizational and domain context out of which tasks arise and are imposed on the cognitive actors (searchers), prompting them to search for information. The genre types emerge out of the same context to add meaning and context to the information objects, which are created by cognitive actors
Fig. 1: Model of Contextual Effects on Searching and Selecting Behaviour [13]
(authors) and added to the information system. Shared intents and purposes motivate both the actors who are engaged in task-performing actions and the actors who are making use of genre to engage in communicative actions. Task – genre associations act as implicit links between information objects and cog-nitive actors performing tasks, based on the common context out of which they emerge. This implicit relationship can be modeled as an explicit set of associations and embedded in an information system, as we did with the X-Site system developed for this domain [14]; however, other implementations could be developed based on this general model.
It follows, that use of task – genre associations is likely to be most effective when the contexts of document creation and of document use are overlapping.
This is the case in this setting, as the cognitive actors are all drawn from the same work group within the company. Similar situations certainly exist within other professional groups and communities of practice. However, when this is not the case, it is possible that bridges could be constructed to map tasks and genres across a contextual divide. Further work will be needed to explore the extent to which genre searching in effective in other types of settings.
4 Conclusion
The idea of supporting pragmatic communication through an IR system is appeal-ing, but problematic. It is appealing in that it would build more directly on natural human communication behaviours and skills, which are inherently social and
co-Fig. 2: The task-genre relationship mapped onto Ingwersen and Järvelin’s General Model of IS&R (Adapted from [2])
40
operative [4]. As Benoît [15] notes, this might help to redress a power imbalance between system designers and system users who tend to have confl icting notions of language and meaning: “To most designers, language is subjected to tests of ‘techni-cal rationality.’ Word units, or semantic tokens, are taken in groups removed from other contexts, and processed. To users, it is the utterance situated in a relational context” [15]. The very notions of common ground and joint action imply greater agency and awareness on the part of searchers than has been afforded them to date.
On the other hand, the extent to which the preconditions for pragmatic com-munication exist when comcom-munication is asynchronous, indirect and mediated by a retrieval system is not clear. It may not be meaningful to suggest that a shared in-tentionality exists in this case; however, it offers something to work towards. Some work has been done to use pragmatic principles in Human Computer Interaction design [16], so this is a possible avenue for further exploration in IR.
Genre is clearly an important pragmatic phenomenon that is situated at the intersection of the cognitive and social realms. The concept of genre is intuitive to information seekers and all large, organic document collections contain genres, so there is potential to make better use of them to support IR. As context carriers, genres help to bridge the gap between cognitive authors by establishing common ground and priming expectations of relevance and use strategies. However, there are many challenges in working with genres: they are organic, dynamic and only loosely defi ned. Ongoing research on genre classifi cation [12] and labeling [11]
seeks to address these issues, but there is more work to be done before genre searching becomes a standard feature in IR systems.
References
1. Sparck-Jones, K.: Document retrieval: Shallow data, deep theories; historical refl ections, potential directions. In: Sebastiani, F. (ed.): Advances in infor-mation retrieval: Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Infor-mation Retrieval (ECIR), Pisa, Italy. Springer, Berlin (2003) 1-11
2. Ingwersen, P., Järvelin, K.: The turn: Integration of information seeking and retrieval in context. Springer, Berlin (2005)
3. Levinson, S.C.: Pragmatics. University Press, Cambridge, UK (1983)
4. Tomasello, M.: Origins of Human Communication. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2008) 5. Unger, C.: Cognitive-pragmatic explanations of socio-pragmatic phenomena:
the case of genre. EPICS I Symposium., Seville, Spain (2002) 6. Clark, H.H.: Using Language. University Press, Cambridge, UK (1996) 7. Sperber, D., Wilson, D.: Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Blackwell,
Malden, MA (1995)
8. Spinuzzi, C.: Tracing genres through organizations: a sociocultural approach to informa-tion design. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2003)
9. Orlikowski, W.J., Yates, J.: Genre repertoire: the structuring of communicative practices in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly 39 (1994) 541-574 10. Dillon, A., Vaughan, M.: „It‘s the journey and the destination“: shape and the
emergent property of genre in evaluating digital documents. New Review of Multimedia and Hypermedia 3 (1997) 91-106
11. Rosso, M.: User-based identifi cation of Web genres. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology 59 (2008) 1053-1072
12. Santini, M.: Zero, single, or multi? Genre of web pages through the users’
perspective. Information Processing & Management 44 (2008) 702-737 13. Freund, L.: Exploiting task-document relations in support of information
retrieval in the workplace. Faculty of Information Studies, Ph.D. University of Toronto (2008)
14. Yeung, P.C.K., Freund, L., Clarke, C.L.A.: X-Site: a workplace search tool for software engineers. Proceedings of the 30th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 23-27. ACM, New York, NY (2007) 900 15. Benoît, G.: Critical theory as a foundation for pragmatic information systems
design. Information Research 6 (2001)
16. Clark, H.H.: Arranging to do things with others. CHI ‚96 (1996) 165-167 Address of congratulating author:
LUANNE FREUND
University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada
Email: luanne.freund[at]ubc.ca
Towards a Geometrical Cognitive Framework
Ingo Frommholz1, Keith van Rijsbergen1, Fabio Crestani2 & Mounia Lalmas1
1 University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
2 University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland
Abstract. Ingwersen’s cognitive framework is regarded as the beginning of a turn which eventually should bring together classical system-oriented and user-oriented IR communities. One of the consequences of this framework is the polyrepresentation principle. The Logical Uncertainty Principle (LUP) is regarded as a compatible model with the cognitive framework. Recently it was shown how LUP can be expressed using the mathematics of Hilbert spaces. This formalism, which is applied in quantum mechanics, harmonises geometry, probability theory and logics. Apart from being a way to express LUP, a further potential arises from a quantum perspective of IR. We present an interactive framework as an example of a quantum-inspired approach which also supports polyrepresentation.
1 Cognitive Framework in IR
One of the main assumptions behind Ingwersen’s cognitive framework for IR in-teraction, as introduced in [3], is that processing takes place on a symbolic or sign level, whereas communication between humans may in addition take place on a cognitive level. This inevitably leads to a cognitive “free fall” as during the translation of a message into signs, any of its presuppositions, meaning and intentionality is constantly lost. Conversely, a human’s interpretation of a message may restore the meaning and intention at the cognitive level, but there is increase in uncertainty which is an inherent feature of any communication process and hence also IR.
To tackle this problem, the principle of polyrepresentation exploits different cog-nitive and functional representations within the information and the cogcog-nitive space. In an information space, different actors (e.g., author, indexer, user) with different tasks and goals in mind (e.g., tagging, indexing, commenting, reviewing) provide various document representations. In a cognitive space, different repre-sentations comprise the user’s information need, the problem state, the current cognitive state and the work task. Information needs are often (but not always) unstable and may be ill-defi ned and only vaguely formulated.
Polyrepresentation makes use of different representations in different spaces, which are all a result of different interpretations by the actors involved. As a