Paper Info
Title
Search Process as Transitions Between Neural States.
Abstract
Search is one of the most performed activities on the World Wide Web. Various conceptual models postulate that the search process can be broken down into distinct emotional and cognitive states of searchers while they engage in a search process. These models significantly contribute to our understanding of the search process. However, they are typically based on self-report measures, such as surveys, questionnaire, etc. and therefore, only indirectly monitor the brain activity that supports such a process. With this work, we take one step further and directly measure the brain activity involved in a search process. To do so, we break down a search process into five time periods: a realisation of Information Need, Query Formulation, Query Submission, Relevance Judgment and Satisfaction Judgment. We then investigate the brain activity between these time periods. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), we monitored the brain activity of twenty-four participants during a search process that involved answering questions carefully selected from the TREC-8 and TREC 2001 Q/A Tracks. This novel analysis that focuses on transitions rather than states reveals the contrasting brain activity between time periods - which enables the identification of the distinct parts of the search process as the user moves through them. This work, therefore, provides an important first step in representing the search process based on the transitions between neural states. Discovering more precisely how brain activity relates to different parts of the search process will enable the development of brain-computer interactions that better support search and search interactions, which we believe our study and conclusions advance.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1145/3178876.3186080
WWW '18: The Web Conference 2018 Lyon France April, 2018
Keywords
Field
DocType
Search Process, Neural State, Brain Activity, Information Need, Query Formulation, Query Submission, Relevance Judgment, Satisfaction, fMRI Study, Functional Brain Network
Information needs,Functional magnetic resonance imaging,Conceptual model,Information retrieval,Computer science,Brain activity and meditation,Realisation,Artificial intelligence,Cognition,Query formulation,Machine learning
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-5639-8
0
0.34
References 
Authors
2
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Yashar Moshfeghi130123.60
Frank E. Pollick227438.14