Situation, Domain, and Coherence: Toward a Pragmatic Psychology of Understanding.

Abstract : This report reviews theoretical perspectives about how people use and understand information. This is particularly relevant to an information production domain such as military intelligence. We focused on approaches in cognitive psychology and on problem solving in particular. These approaches proved limited in several important ways but specifically because the emphasis in cognitive psychology is information processing rather than information content and on 'toy' problems rather than the pragmatic use of information to meet a domain-relative objective. Drawing upon social cognition and semiotics, we propose a conceptual framework that emphasizes coherence, or how people make sense of information concerning a domain objective, and pragmatics, or how people actually use information to meet that objective. Finally, we suggest that while understanding mental processing that underlies the use of information may be valuable, our pragmatic coherence framework is better suited to address questions about how people use information. It will provide a more direct link between theory and application.