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We report the results of a British Library Research and Development Department‐funded design study for an interactive information retrieval system which will determine structural representations of the anomalous states of knowledge (ASKs) underlying information needs, and attempt to resolve the anomalies through a variety of retrieval strategies performed on a database of documents represented in compatible structural formats. Part I discusses the background to the project and the theory underlying it, Part II (next issue) presents our methods, results and conclusions. Basic premises of the project were: that information needs are not in principle precisely specifiable; that it is possible to elicit problem statements from information system users from which representations of the ASK underlying the need can be derived; that there are classes of ASKs; and, that all elements of information retrieval systems ought to be based on the user's ASK. We have developed a relatively freeform interview technique for eliciting problem statements, and a statistical word co‐occurrence analysis for deriving network representations of the problem statements and abstracts. Structural characteristics of the representations have been used to determine classes of ASKs, and both ASK and information structures have been evaluated by, respectively, users and authors. Some results are: that interviewing appears to be a satisfactory technique for eliciting problem statements from which ASKs can be determined; that the statistical analysis produces structures which are generally appropriate both for documents and problem statements; that ASKs thus represented can be usefully classified according to their structural characteristics; and, that of thirty‐five subjects, only two had ASKs for which traditional ‘best match’ retrieval would be intuitively appropriate. The results of the design study indicate that at least some of our premises are reasonable, and that an ASK‐based information retrieval system is at least feasible.

Pew and Mavor (1998) called for an integrative representation of human behavior for use in models of individual combatants and organizations. Models with integrated representation of behavior have only been achieved at rudimentary levels according to those performing the studies (e.g. Pew & Mavor, 1998; Tulving, 2002) and those building the models (e.g. Warwick et al., 2002). This chapter will address aspects of cognitive performance that are important to incorporate into models of combat based on acceptance of theory, strength of empirical data, or for other reasons such as to bridge gaps where incomplete knowledge exists about cognitive behavior and performance. As a starting point, this chapter will assess which of Pew and Mavor’s recommendations are still appropriate as determined by a review of selected literature on cognition and its representation. We will also provide some review and extensions of key literature on cognition and modeling and suggest a way ahead to close the remaining gaps. Different aspects of cognition are described with recent findings, and most are followed by an example of how they have been represented in computer models or a discussion of challenges to their representation in modeling.

In ‘ASK for Information Retrieval: Part I’, we discussed the theory and background to a design study for an information retrieval (IR) system based on the attempt to represent the anomalous states of knowledge (ASKs) underlying information needs. In Part II, we report the methods and results of the design study, and our conclusions.

This paper aims to describe the web‐based scaffold dynamic simulation system (PRES‐on) designed for pre‐service teachers.

The paper describes the initial design of a web‐based scaffold dynamic simulation system (PRES‐on) as a cognitive tool for learners to represent problems. For the widespread use of the PRES‐on, the authors adopt the design experiment methodology to advance pre‐service teachers' pedagogical applications of such engine for effective teaching and learning through the integration of PRES‐on into the existing pre‐service course.

A proto‐type of the system has been completed and the authors are in the process of enhancing its features. Ultimately, they will build in all the features stated in the literature review and integrate it into pre‐service teachers' curriculum where the aim is to seek to understand its pedagogical applications. The current design only incorporated a quantitative component. The authors are in the process of embedding features that will allow users to build in qualitative representation and different level of question prompts that will facilitate users' cognitive processes.

This study contributes to the growing interests among researchers and educators in using web‐based technologies to foster deep learning. Being one of the first initiatives to develop a web‐based scaffold dynamic simulation system for problem solving purpose, PRES‐on will inform the understanding on how new technological developments could enhance learning in environments that involve multidisciplinary problem solving.

To investigate the effects of auditor interaction on problem representation, information acquisition, and performance in the going‐concern task.

Participants were asked to evaluate the going‐concern status of a company. The study used a pretest‐posttest control group (CG) experimental design. Half of participating accountants were randomly assigned to the CG and the other half to the experimental group (EG). In stage one, participants in both CG and EG performed the entire task individually. In stage two, participants in EG performed the experimental task as an interacting dyad while participants in CG performed the experimental task again individually.

The results showed that interacting auditors' “shared problem representation” focus more on relationship between information and less focus on the simple facts or abstraction. Interacting auditors acquired fewer total number of cues, spent more time, visited financial cues fewer times, and acquired fewer liquidity and management cues than did individual auditors. The results also showed that the effects of auditor interaction were maximized when the member of a dyad were heterogeneous.

The paper used a going‐concern task and non‐hierarchical dyads. Future studies might investigate the effects of: different tasks other than going‐concern evaluation, hierarchical dyads (e.g. senior‐manager) after statistically controlling for the power variable, and different types of dyads (e.g. traditioned vs staticized) on group decision making.

The results can be used for training purposes for auditors to increase their performance.

The study is one of the first to work in the area of multi‐person audit judgment (especially in interacting auditor judgment).

How do cognitive aspects influence the use/non-use of accounting information by the politicians? The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and theorize the readiness to use and the actual use of accounting information in relation to the human and social agency involved.

Applying cognitive fit theory and social cognitive theory, the authors explain how cognition of accounting information producers and users relates to their tasks and their environment. Analyzing cognitive matching, the authors develop accounting information usefulness as a function of the cognitive match between the accounting information producers and users.

The theoretical findings posit that cognitive fit increases with the degree of matching between the cognition of accounting information producers and the cognition of accounting information users. The theory proposes that enriching and matching the various cognitive factors lead to formation of more aligned mental representations to govern the processes of accounting information production and use as a prerequisite for the accounting information usefulness.

By theorizing human cognition, behavior and learning, the authors seek to contribute to the explanation and prediction of accounting information use. Future research needs to empirically validate and/or further develop the propositions.

Practically, the conceptualization can be used to align individual and collective learning on both sides and to introduce information use audit as an instrument for supporting collective learning.

The theory of accounting information usefulness is the first attempt in public sector accounting literature to explain the relation of production and consumption of accounting information in relation to the cognition of the actors involved.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the cognitive research of Herbert Simon to business strategy decisions, to begin a discussion of the emerging field of Behavioral Strategy.

Research on cognition, memory and expertise are organized, with the aim of enlightening the process of business strategy development.

The authors select four insights from Simon's work to form an integrative framework of decision making and apply this to illuminate existing approaches to schools of strategy thought and practice.

This paper should lead to research on how to advance the process of solving strategic problems, in both practice and theory. The most important limitation is that much additional research lies ahead, as this is a foundational view.

This paper is the first to recognize the potential for application of Simon's cognitive research to the practice of strategic decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the need to develop pre-service teachers’ problem solving ability, in particular, in the context of real-world complex problems.

To argue for the need to develop pre-service teachers’ problem solving skills, the authors describe a web-based problem representation system that is embedded with levels of scaffolding to support the claim.

The authors’ conceptualisation of this cloud-based environment is also very much aligned with the development of pre-service teachers’ systems thinking. Teacher learning itself is a complex system that involves many processes, mechanisms and interactions of elements, and the outcomes may be highly unpredictable (Opfer and Pedder, 2011). As a result of the complex nature of teacher learning, it would be meaningful to frame teacher learning as a complex system. An approach to enable pre-service teachers to be aware of this complexity is to situate them in a systems thinking context.

This paper discusses a system which was developed for problem solving. The levels of adaptive scaffoldings embedded within the system is an innovation which is not found in other similar research projects.

In this paper, a set of safe adaptive genetic algorithms (sGAs) is proposed based on the Splicing/Decomposable encoding scheme and the efficient speed‐up strategies developed by Xu et al.. The proposed algorithms implement the self‐adaptation of the problem representation, selection and recombination operators at the levels of population, individual and component which commendably balance the conflicts between “reliability” and “efficiency”, as well as “exploitation” and “exploration” existed in the evolutionary algorithms. It is shown that the algorithms converge to the optimum solution in probability one. The proposed sGAs are experimentally compared with the classical genetic algorithm (CGA), non‐uniform genetic algorithm (nGA) proposed by Michalewicz, forking genetic algorithm (FGA) proposed by Tsutsui et al. and the classical evolution programming (CEP). The experiments indicate that the new algorithms perform much more efficiently than CGA and FGA do, comparable with the real‐coded GAs — nGA and CEP. All the algorithms are further evaluated through an application to a difficult real‐life application problem: the inverse problem of fractal encoding related to fractal image compression technique. The results for the sGA is better than those of CGA and FGA, and has the same, sometimes better performance compared to those of nGA and CEP.

The purpose of this paper is to present a graph representation of the design space that is suitable for the ant colony optimization (ACO) method in topology optimization (TO) problems.

The ACO is employed to obtain optimal routes in an equivalent graph representation of the discretized design space, with each route corresponding to a given distribution of material.

The problem associated with the maximization of the torque of a c‐core magnetic actuator is investigated, in which part of the yoke is discretized into a 16×8 grid and can assume three different materials: air, pure iron and a magnetic material.

The results of the c‐core magnetic actuator problem, which are in agreement with literature available, show the adequacy of the proposed approach to TO of electromagnetic devices.

The graph representation of the design space permits the solution of topological design problems with an arbitrary number of materials.

The results illustrate the potential of the methodology in dealing with multi‐domain TO problems, and the possibility to extend the application to 3D problems.