Our first review article (Wagemans et al., 2012) on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of Gestalt psychology focused on perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization. It concluded that further progress requires a reconsideration of the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the Gestalt approach, which is provided here. In…

Message interpretation, the notion that individuals assign meaning to stimuli, is related to listening presage, listening process, and listening product. As a central notion of communication, meaning includes (a) denotation and connotation, and (b) content and relational meanings, which can vary in ambiguity and vagueness. Past research on message…

Distinguishing between discrete and continuous latent variable distributions has become increasingly important in numerous domains of behavioral science. Here, the authors explore an information-theoretic approach to latent distribution modeling, in which the ability of latent distribution models to represent statistical information in observed…

Many of the puzzles of absolute judgment raised by George A. Miller in 1956 remain puzzles today. Literature directed toward capacity limitations in absolute judgment tasks and in short-term memory is reviewed, and some models that attempt to elucidate the phenomena are discussed. (SLD)

A new approach to information science, activity theory emphasizes the centrality of practice as doing and activity and foregrounds setting and context as essential orienting concepts. It can provide information science with a rich, unifying, and heuristically valuable vocabulary and conceptual framework that will facilitate the continual…

Presents an overview of feedback within the cybernetics and social frameworks. These feedback concepts are then compared with the interactive feedback concept evolving within the framework of information seeking and retrieving, based on their conceptualization of the feedback loop and notion of information. (Author/AEF)

Explores gender politics in information technology theory and research. Maintains that an absence of critical consciousness about gender reproduces old patterns of power and privilege in the social distribution of knowledge. Identifies ways in which displays of the perspectivity of knowledge can secure new models of systematic,…

Information managers promote research generally by knowing about knowing and by working within a paradigm that spans all paradigms. Argues that information professionals underestimate their actual and potential influence on other disciplines and that an emphasis on practical skills obscures the role of theory. Discusses the need for further…

An expanded vision of evaluation is offered that accommodates the use of both descriptive information and evaluative information, and which connects evaluation in the naturalistic paradigm with evaluation in the rationalistic paradigm for making informed decisions within programs of education and development. The model of "Information Development…

This report summarizes the roundtable on information technology which brought together leaders from business, government, the non-profit sector, and academia to explore the use of complex adaptive systems as a model for determining information technology's role in both the workplace and diverse societal settings. Topics covered in this document…

Describes an approximate document ranking process that uses a compact array of in-memory, low-precision approximations for document length. Combined with another rule for reducing the memory required by partial similarity accumulators, the approximation heuristic allows the ranking of large document collections using less than one byte of memory…

Connections between recent developments in theories about language, learning theory, and language teaching are traced from Chomsky's work elaborating the distinction between competence and performance. The evolution of the concepts of function and notion from the study of how language and communication come together in linguistic philosophy is…