| Popis: |
Information foraging connects optimal foraging theory in ecology withhow humans search for information. The theory suggests that, followingan information scent, the information seeker must optimize the tradeoffbetween exploration by repeated steps in the search space vs.exploitation, using the resources encountered. We conjecture that thistradeoff characterizes how a user deals with uncertainty and its twoaspects, risk and ambiguity in economic theory. Risk is related to theperceived quality of the actually visited patch of information, and canbe reduced by exploiting and understanding the patch to a better extent.Ambiguity, on the other hand, is the opportunity cost of having higherquality patches elsewhere in the search space. The aforementionedtradeoff depends on many attributes, including traits of the user: atthe two extreme ends of the spectrum, analytic and wholistic searchersemploy entirely different strategies. The former type focuses onexploitation first, interspersed with bouts of exploration, whereas thelatter type prefers to explore the search space first and consume later.Our findings from an eye-tracking study of experts' interactions withnovel search interfaces in the biomedical domain suggest that usertraits of cognitive styles and perceived search task difficultyare significantly correlated with eye gaze and search behaviour. Wealso demonstrate that perceived risk shifts the balance betweenexploration and exploitation in either type of users, tilting it againstvs. in favour of ambiguity minimization. Since the pattern of behaviourin information foraging is quintessentially sequential, risk andambiguity minimization cannot happen simultaneously, leading to afundamental limit on how good such a tradeoff can be. This in turnconnects information seeking with the emergent field of quantum decisiontheory. |
