A Cognitive Analysis of Information Retrieval

The lackness of a formal account is probably one of the most evident of the shortcomings of information retrieval: concepts like information, information need, and relevance are neither well understood nor formally defined. This paper sketches a cognitive framework that permits to analyze these three central concepts of the information retrieval scenario. The framework consists of concepts as cognitive agents acting in the world, knowledge states possessed by the cognitive agents, transitions among knowledge states, and inferences. On the basis of the framework, information is formally defined as a pair representing the difference between two knowledge states; this definition permits to clarify the distinction among data, knowledge, and information and to discuss the subjectiveness of information. On this ground, the concept of information need is examined: it is defined, it is studied in the context of the interaction between an information retrieval system and a user, and the well known classification in verificative, conscious topical, and muddled needs is analyzed. On the basis of the above definitions of information and information need, relevance is formally defined, and some critical features of this concept are discussed.

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