Shape Recovery Analysis (SHERA), a new visual analytical technique, is applied to the N-Gram hypothesis on matched Japanese-English technical documents. Results reveal compaction in the translation of Japanese subject terms to English subject terms. The biagram approach to the Japanese data yields a remarkable similarity to the matching visualized…

Reviews and discusses critically the development during the last decade of the cognitive approach to information retrieval research and theory. The focus is analytic and empirical research on the complex nature of information need formation and situation, their inherent association with the concept of relevance, and the development of cognitive…

As part of an ongoing research program, the authors investigated the use of single-voiced narration and multi-voiced characterizations/monologues in a formative evaluation study of an instructional lesson on information processing. That lesson employed a design based on the use of content-related metaphors and a metaphorical graphical user…

This study investigated the question of whether a student's expectancy, values and negative affect influenced their deep information processing approach and achievement at the end of the first and second academic year. Five hundred and sixty-five first-year students completed a self-report questionnaire on three different occasions. The…

Background: Patterns of low heart rate, skin conductance and cortisol seem to characterise children with disruptive behaviour disorder (DBD). Until now, the startle paradigm has not been used in DBD children. We investigated whether DBD children, like adult psychopaths, process emotional stimuli in an abnormal way. Method: Twenty-one DBD and 33…

This quantitative study compared the instructional effects of two web-based animation strategies against static graphics by high and low prior knowledge participants. One strategy used animation to gain attention; the second to gain attention and provide elaboration. Participants were 111 college student volunteers. Two-way multiple analysis of…

The case for more technology in schools is compelling. The leverage for a school based solution is traceable to the "Common and Agreed National Goals for Schooling" (AEC, 1989), namely that students will develop skills in "information processing and computing". Schools have wrestled with this "integration challenge"…

This paper discusses a mental model of learning based on the processes of attention, perception, processing, and application. The learning process starts with attention, such as curiosity, excitement, expectation, or fear; in pedagogy this is called motivation. New impressions are dependent on and interpreted against the background of previous…

With no standards governing their creation, a variety of formats are being used for World Wide Web homepages. Some are well organized, present their information clearly, and work with multiple browsers. Others, however, are slow to load, function poorly with some Web browsing software, and are so badly structured that they are very difficult to…

Beginning with a brief history of the synergistic relationship between technology and literacy, this article examines the need for redefining literacy beyond print-based communications. It suggests that literacy, in a computer-networked society, is not solely about reading the printed word, but rather, that it encompasses receiving and sending…

Motivated by the brain, neural networks are a right-brained approach to artificial intelligence that is used to recognize patterns based on previous training. In practice, one would not program an expert system to recognize a pattern and one would not train a neural network to make decisions from rules; but one could combine the best features of…

This paper presents the basics of "LATEX," a computerized typesetting program popular with mathematicians and other writers of technical papers, and compares it to conventional word processing programs. LATEX, which requires a text editor such as WordPad or NotePad--the text editor is used to produce and input file which the LATEX program…

This newsletter features innovations in resource management and information technology to support New York State government. The newsletter contains the following six sections: (1) "Electronic Commerce: Government Services in the New Millennium" -- examining the need for government involvement in electronic commerce policy and…

Teachers cannot prepare their students to be information literate unless they themselves understand how to find and use information. This Digest discusses the concept of information literacy (the ability to access, evaluate, and use information from a variety of sources) and its relevance for teachers. Professional associations for K-12 and higher…

The Cooperative Principle posits four general ways in which a speaker is expected to be cooperative: (1) quantity--make a contribution no more and no less informative than is required; (2) quality--say only that which one both believes and has adequate evidence for; (3) relation--be relevant; and (4) manner--make a contribution easy to understand.…