Discusses issues relating to reading text on computer screens and considers how to optimize screen presentation of text, particularly for academic journals. Topics discussed include reading as a physical and cognitive skill; classifying text according to reader-relevant criteria; and the design implications of these factors for electronic journal…

Discusses electronic commerce and presents the concept of Web assistants, human assistants working in an electronic Web shop. Presents results of a usability study of a prototype adaptive Web assistant system that show users were enthusiastic about the concept of Web assistants and its implications. (Author/LRW)

Discusses a new, informational-based cybernetic conception of the early development of child consciousness. Suggests a solution to the fundamental problem of formulating and creating the optimal cognitive preconditions of successful child-computer interaction, and analyzes some negative aspects of using intelligent computer and communications…

Presents an efficient spoken-access approach for both Chinese text and Mandarin speech information retrieval. Highlights include human-computer interaction via voice input, speech query recognition at the syllable level, automatic term suggestion, relevance feedback techniques, and experiments that show an improvement in the effectiveness of…

This study of scholars' judgments of information quality and cognitive authority when interacting with information on the World Wide Web is based on data from verbal protocols during the searches, search logs, and post-search interviews. Discusses predictive judgments made before scholars looked at Web pages and evaluative judgments made after.…

Focuses on methods of generating and evaluating hypertext. Highlights include historical landmarks; nonlinearity; literary hypertext; models of hypertext; manual, automatic, and semi-automatic generation of hypertext; mathematical models for hypertext evaluation, including computing coverage and correlation; human factors in evaluation; and…

This study evaluates the usability of the Journal Finder integrated search interface, developed at the Jackson Library at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This interface provides electronic access to publications including journals, newsletters, newspapers, and magazines. This study was conducted to determine how intuitive and…

The author of this article believes that human survival depends upon the ability to develop and work with machines of high artificial intelligence. He lists uses of such machines, including terrestrial mining, outer space exploration, and other tasks too dangerous, too expensive, or too boring for human beings. (MA)

This paper discusses the complexity of explanation activity in human-human goal-directed dialogue and suggests that this complexity ought to be taken into account in the design of explanation in human-computer interaction. A general model of clarity in human-computer systems is proposed, incorporating explanation as one component. On the basis of…

This report describes Designer, an interactive tool for assisting with the design of two-dimensional graphic interfaces for instructional systems. The system, which consists of a color graphics interface to a mathematical simulation, provides enhancements to the Graphics Editor component of Steamer (a computer-based training system designed to aid…

This essay compares two recent books on computer technology in terms of their usage of gendered or gender-free language. The two books examined are "Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age" by J. David Bolter and "The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit" by Sherry Turkle. It is argued that the two authors' gender differences in…

This report describes the current version of the Why System, a script-based Socratic tutor which uses tutoring strategies formulated as production rules. The current system is capable of carrying on a dialogue about the factors influencing rainfall by presenting different cases to the student, asking for predictions, probing for relevant factors,…

Requirements are discussed for an information retrieval language that enables users to employ natural language sentences in interaction with computer-stored files. Anticipated modes of operation of the system are outlined. These are: the search mode, the dictionary mode, the tables mode, and the statistical mode. Analysis of sample sentences…

This thesis describes work done as part of the Video Console Indexing Project (VICI), a program to improve the quality and reduce the time and work involved in indexing documents. The objective of the work described was to design a video terminal system which could be connected to a main computer to provide rapid natural communication between the…

Results of preliminary tests made prior and subsequent to the installation of a two-way interactive communication system which involves a computer complex termed the Local Processing Center and subscriber terminals located in the home or business location are reported. This first phase of the overall test plan includes tests made at Theta-Com…