Cognitive differences between readers attentive and inattentive to task-related information: an eye-tracking study
| Date | 04 October 2022 |
| Pages | 917-939 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/AJIM-01-2022-0007 |
| Published date | 04 October 2022 |
| Author | Jing Chen,Lu Zhang,Wenhai Qian |
Cognitive differences between
readers attentive and inattentive to
task-related information:
an eye-tracking study
Jing Chen, Lu Zhang and Wenhai Qian
School of Information Management, Central China Normal University,
Wuhan, China
Abstract
Purpose –Attentive to task-related information is the prerequisite for task completion. Comparing the
cognition between attentive readers (AR) and inattentive readers (IAR) is of great value for improving reading
services which has seldom been studied. To explore their cognitive differences, this study investigates the
effectiveness, efficiency and cognitive resource allocation strategy by eye-tracking technology.
Design/methodology/approach–A controlled user study of two types of task, fact-finding (FF) and content
understanding (CU) tasks was conducted to collect data including answer for task, fixation duration (FD),
fixation count (FC), fixation duration proportion (FDP), and fixation count proportion (FCP). 24 participants
were placed into AR or IAR group according to their fixation duration on paragraphs related to task.
Findings –Two types of cognitive resource allocation strategies, question-oriented (QO) and navigation-
assistant (NA) were identified according to the differences in FDP and FCP. In FF task, although QO strategy
was applied by the two groups, AR group was significantly more effective and efficient. In CU task, although
the two groups were similar in effectiveness and efficiency, AR group promoted their strategies to NA while
IAR group sticked to applying QO strategy. Furthermore, an interesting phenomenon “win by uncertainty”,
which implies IAR group may get correct answer through uncertain means, such as clue, domain knowledge or
guess, rather than task-related information, was observed.
Originality/value –This study takes a deep insight into cognition from the prospect of attentive and
inattentive to task-related information. Identifying indicators about cognition helps to distinguish attentive
and inattentive readers in various tasks automatically. The cognitive resource allocation strategy applied by
readers sheds new light on reading skill training. A typical reading phenomenon “win by uncertainty”was
found and defined. Understanding the phenomenon is of great value for satisfying reader information need and
enhancing their deep learning.
Keywords Attentive and inattentive to task-related information, Cognitive difference,
Cognitive resource allocation strategy, Eye-tracking technology, Reading phenomenon
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Nowadays, reading some information to complete tasks, such as answering a fact-finding
question and writing an essay, is prevalence in daily life. Task-related information which
refers to highly relevant information to a specific task can satisfy user information need
totally (Mao et al., 2016;Wu et al., 2019). Attentive to task-related information is the first step
of cognitive process (McConkie et al., 1992). The existing researches have confirmed attentive
to task-related information would influence cognitive processing and result in good reading
performance (Anderson, 1982;Franceschini et al., 2012). However, the existing
comprehension of the cognition of attentive to task-related information is still unilateral,
Task-related
information
917
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this work provided by National Natural
Science Foundation of China (No: 72074094).
Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant
numbers 72074094).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2050-3806.htm
Received 13 February 2022
Revised 2 June 2022
Accepted 3 July 2022
Aslib Journal of Information
Management
Vol. 75 No. 5, 2023
pp. 917-939
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2050-3806
DOI 10.1108/AJIM-01-2022-0007
especially lacks studies from the aspect of cognitive differences between attentive and
inattentive to task-related information. As a result, the attentive and inattentive readers
cannot be distinguished well in the reading process, so corresponding services such as
reading skill and deep learning training cannot be offered effectively.
In cognition research, effectiveness, efficiency and strategy are the fundamental aspects
(Bhattacharya and Gwizdka, 2018;Koornneef and Mulders, 2017). Effectiveness and
efficiency represent the external outcome of cognition. While strategy represents the inner
mechanism of cognition, including cognitive resource allocation strategy and comprehensive
strategy, and the former is crucial to attentive or inattentive to task-related information (Yu
et al., 2017). Eye-tracking technology has been a popular cognitive research tool. It helps to
show which information is allocated more cognitive resource (Buscher et al., 2010;Granka
et al., 2004). Meanwhile, task type has been shown it is one important context in reading
(Takaku et al., 2010).
Large research has studied the cognition of attentive to task-related information, yet the
comparison between attentive and inattentive is scarce, and thus corresponding help for
inattentive readers cannot be offered. To address such questions, the study aims to explore
the cognitive differences between attentive and inattentive to task-related information, and
investigate the effectiveness, efficiency and cognitive resource allocation strategy by eye-
tracking technology in two types of reading task. A user study with well-designed reading
tasks was performed, and 24 students were participated. Eye-movement data, such as
fixation duration, fixation count and their proportion, and answer for task were captured and
analyzed. Participants were placed into two groups: attentive reader and inattentive reader. In
our context, attentive reader is defined as people whose duration of the fixation on the
paragraphs related to task exceeds 200 msec, while the duration below 200 msec is defined as
inattentive reader. Mann–Whitney Utests were performed to see whether there are
differences in effectiveness, efficiency and cognitive resource allocation strategy between the
two groups in each reading task, and also between the two tasks of each group. The
significances of this study are as follows. Theoretically, the understanding of cognition
deepens from the prospect of attentive and inattentive to task-related information. An
interesting phenomenon “win by uncertainty”was discovered and defined. Practically, it can
potentially enable the design of better support for readers attentive to task-related
information. It takes a deep insight into optimizing readers’strategies and enhancing deep
learning also. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews related work.
The research questions and associated hypotheses are introduced in Section 3. The detailed
methods of the study are followed in Section 4. After that, the results and discussions are
detailed in Section 5 and Section 6, respectively. Finally, the conclusions elaborate on the main
findings are presented in Section 7.
2. Literature review
2.1 Attention to task-related information study
In library and information science, task-related information has been defined as the relevant
paragraphs of the text which match the required information to this specific task, also known
as relevant information (Mao et al., 2016;Wu et al., 2019). Study of task-related information is
important for the design of systems. Prediction of task-related information is the interest of
researchers. Gwizdka (2014) used eye-tracking technology to acquire the gaze-based metrics,
with it to predict document relevance. Taranova and Braschler (2021) regarded textual
complexity as an indicator of document involving task-related information. However, a little
is known about what happens in reading, especially attention to task-related information.
Attention to task-related information has been defined as the result and reflection of user
brain cognition (Marvin and Chun, 2000;Franceschini et al., 2012;Maturi and Sheridan, 2020;
AJIM
75,5
918
Get this document and AI-powered insights with a free trial of vLex and Vincent AI
Get Started for FreeStart Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting
Start Your Free Trial of vLex and Vincent AI, Your Precision-Engineered Legal Assistant
-
Access comprehensive legal content with no limitations across vLex's unparalleled global legal database
-
Build stronger arguments with verified citations and CERT citator that tracks case history and precedential strength
-
Transform your legal research from hours to minutes with Vincent AI's intelligent search and analysis capabilities
-
Elevate your practice by focusing your expertise where it matters most while Vincent handles the heavy lifting