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This chapter explores new and emerging dimensions in our understanding of how information behaviour develops in early childhood. Spink (2010) proposed that information behaviour — when we engage in behaviours to make sense of, seek, avoid, forage, use and organise information — is (1) shaped by both instinctive and environmental dimensions that are as essential to the lives of our prehistoric ancestors as they are for people today and (2) emerges in early childhood. This chapter explores what we currently know about the development of cognitive, language, social and information behaviour abilities in early childhood. Drawing on research from cognitive and developmental psychology, and findings from two studies of different aspects of young children's information behaviours, including Web searching (Spink, et al., 2010) and library information categorisation (Cooper, 2004), the chapter discusses information behaviour development in early childhood. The connection between general cognitive development and information behaviour are discussed, and further research suggested.

A sign of maturity of a scientific field is its theoretical growth that is based on an increased depth of understanding and a broadening of the contexts and issues addressed. Information behaviour research has grown substantially over the last 10 years, expanding from a focused exploration of utilitarian features such as problem-focused, work-related information behaviour to inclusion of aspects such as leisurely information needs and impact of spiritual information. Exploring new concepts and contexts helps to build an increasingly thorough and holistic understanding of information behaviour, which, in turn, lifts the field to a higher theoretical level.

Ever since our cognitive make-up allowed it, human beings have used their information behaviour abilities to help them survive. Information behaviour evolved in response to the need by early humans to benefit from information that could not be immediately accessible in the nearby environment or obtained through communication. Humans developed an information behaviour ability, including processes of information sense making, foraging, seeking, organising and using. Information behaviour brought several benefits to early humans, including greater influence and control over their environment, and the degree in which they could use the environment for their own gain and survival. Information behaviour thus brought several advantages for the survival of early humans, and consequently emerged as a genetically favoured trait (Spink, 2010).

During multitasking, humans handle multiple tasks through task switching or engage in multitasking information behaviors. For example, a user switches between seeking new kitchen information and medical information. Recent studies provide insights these complex multitasking human information behaviors (HIB). However, limited studies have examined the interplay between information and non‐information tasks.

The goal of the paper was to examine the interplay of information and non‐information task behaviors.

This paper explores and speculates on a new direction in HIB research. The nature of HIB as a multitasking activity including the interplay of information and non‐information behavior tasks, and the relation between multitasking information behavior to cognitive style and individual differences, is discussed. A model of multitasking between information and non‐information behavior tasks is proposed.

Multitasking information behavior models should include the interplay of information and non‐information tasks, and individual differences and cognitive styles.

The paper is the first information science theoretical examination of the interplay between information and non‐information tasks.

Needs for information literacy, disparities in society, bridging digital divides, richness of information sources in electronic (e-)environments and the value of dictionaries have often been propagated. To improve information sources and information literacy training, information behaviour must be understood (i.e. all information activities). This paper conceptualises new opportunities for information sources (e.g. electronic dictionaries) to all society sectors, dictionary literacy and research lenses such as lexicography to supplement information literacy and behaviour research.

A scoping review of information literacy and behaviour, lexicography and dictionary literature grounds the conceptualisation of dictionary literacy, its alignment with information literacy, information activities and information behaviour and lexicography as additional research lens.

Research lenses must acknowledge dictionary use in e-environments, information activities and skills, meanings of information and dictionary literacy, the value of e-dictionaries, alignment with information behaviour research that guides the development of information sources and interdisciplinary research from, e.g. lexicography – thus contextualisation.

Research implications – information behaviour and information literacy research can be enriched by lexicography as research lens. Further conceptualisation could align information behaviour, information literacy and dictionary literacy.

Dictionary training, aligned with information literacy training, can be informed by this paper.

The value of dictionary literacy for all sectors of societies can be improved.

Large bodies of literature on information behaviour and lexicography individually do not cover combined insights from both.

Originally grounded in library and information science, the majority of information behaviour and information-seeking theories focus on task-based scenarios where users try to resolve information needs. While other theories exist, such as how people unexpectedly encounter information, for example, they are typically related back to tasks, motivated by work or personal goals. This chapter, however, focuses on casual-leisure scenarios that are typically motivated by hedonistic needs rather than information needs, where people engage in searching behaviours for pleasure rather than to find information. This chapter describes two studies on (1) television information behaviour and (2) the casual information behaviours described by users of Twitter. The first study focuses on a specific casual-leisure domain that is familiar to many, while the second indicates that our findings generalise to many other casual-leisure scenarios. The results of these two studies are then used to define an initial model of casual-leisure information behaviour, which highlights the key differences between casual-leisure scenarios and typical information behaviour theory. The chapter concludes by discussing how this new model of casual-leisure information behaviour challenges the way we design information systems, measure their value and consequently evaluate their support for users.

This chapter explores how early theorising about information behaviour and the emergence of conceptual modelling in information behaviour research had its beginnings in thinking that was taking place in the very late 1970s and early 1980s in Europe and the USA. Some of these ideas were presented in papers that are very familiar and much cited, but others in papers which may be less familiar and, consequently, may not be much cited, but which together contribute to explain why the rapid development in conceptual thinking about, as opposed to the simple empirical study of, information behaviour took place from that period to the present. Four dimensions are identified which together underpin the emergence of conceptual modelling in contemporary information behaviour research. The four dimensions are (1) the adoption of a social science perspective, (2) a qualitative as opposed to a quantitative orientation, (3) a focus on the modelling of information behaviour and (4) a concern with empirical validation and exemplification in the development of such models. These four dimensions came together to provide a tacit rather than explicit framework for subsequent theorising about information behaviour, and in particular underpinned studies involved the conceptual modelling of information behaviour. Information behaviour research then began to develop conceptual models very different from the empiricism of earlier studies, and, at the same time exhibited a strong concern for the exemplification or validation of these models in empirical studies. This combination of theoretically based conceptual modelling and empirical exemplification and validation together gave much of the character to information behaviour research from the later 1970s and early 1980s, an influence that extends to the present.