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Abstract

Details

Advances in Librarianship
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-12024-618-2

Article
Publication date: 11 May 2015

Debora Jeske and Christian Stamov Roßnagel

The authors contribute to the literature by contrasting the cognitive with a contextual view on learning and development to address preconceptions about aging in order to broaden…

Abstract

Purpose

The authors contribute to the literature by contrasting the cognitive with a contextual view on learning and development to address preconceptions about aging in order to broaden employers’ views on learning and performance across the working life and careers of their employees. The authors furthermore identify a number of opportunities that exist to support and sustain learning capability and performance in older workers. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted a selective literature search to identify literature that best exemplifies both the cognitive and contextual view.

Findings

Age-related declines in performance are observed on very specific and limited tasks, unlikely to be encountered in the workplace. Due to its focus on assessing limits and age differences, such studies will not normally take experience, job and personal resources into account – these are more likely to be present in the workplace. The authors find that much of the more applied evidence suggests older workers can perform at a similar level to their younger colleagues – when the workplace or training context does not restrain them from using their own strategies and resources to complete tasks.

Research limitations/implications

The current overview of research that is more representative of the more cognitive view outlines a number of issues regarding the transferability as well as generalisability of these well publicised findings. Many of the laboratory-based cognitive ageing research focuses on “testing the limits” of cognitive processing and efficiency. This paradigm is not compatible with the specific tasks and learning that takes place in the workplace, which led us to a more contextual view.

Practical implications

The authors provide several starting points for broader and more inclusive training and development, particularly the role of supervisory practices, climate, self-efficacy and learning competency, resources and strategies.

Originality/value

Taking a more contextual view may foster a re-evaluation of how inclusive current managerial practice, policies and current development initiatives are. Distinguishing job and personal resources can help in identifying the aspects that can be influenced by workers themselves and those aspects that are the primary responsibility of organisations and their managers.

Details

Education + Training, vol. 57 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0040-0912

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1996

PETER INGWERSEN

The objective of the paper is to amalgamate theories of text retrieval from various research traditions into a cognitive theory for information retrieval interaction. Set in a…

2446

Abstract

The objective of the paper is to amalgamate theories of text retrieval from various research traditions into a cognitive theory for information retrieval interaction. Set in a cognitive framework, the paper outlines the concept of polyrepresentation applied to both the user's cognitive space and the information space of IR systems. The concept seeks to represent the current user's information need, problem state, and domain work task or interest in a structure of causality. Further, it implies that we should apply different methods of representation and a variety of IR techniques of different cognitive and functional origin simultaneously to each semantic full‐text entity in the information space. The cognitive differences imply that by applying cognitive overlaps of information objects, originating from different interpretations of such objects through time and by type, the degree of uncertainty inherent in IR is decreased. Polyrepresentation and the use of cognitive overlaps are associated with, but not identical to, data fusion in IR. By explicitly incorporating all the cognitive structures participating in the interactive communication processes during IR, the cognitive theory provides a comprehensive view of these processes. It encompasses the ad hoc theories of text retrieval and IR techniques hitherto developed in mainstream retrieval research. It has elements in common with van Rijsbergen and Lalmas' logical uncertainty theory and may be regarded as compatible with that conception of IR. Epistemologically speaking, the theory views IR interaction as processes of cognition, potentially occurring in all the information processing components of IR, that may be applied, in particular, to the user in a situational context. The theory draws upon basic empirical results from information seeking investigations in the operational online environment, and from mainstream IR research on partial matching techniques and relevance feedback. By viewing users, source systems, intermediary mechanisms and information in a global context, the cognitive perspective attempts a comprehensive understanding of essential IR phenomena and concepts, such as the nature of information needs, cognitive inconsistency and retrieval overlaps, logical uncertainty, the concept of ‘document’, relevance measures and experimental settings. An inescapable consequence of this approach is to rely more on sociological and psychological investigative methods when evaluating systems and to view relevance in IR as situational, relative, partial, differentiated and non‐linear. The lack of consistency among authors, indexers, evaluators or users is of an identical cognitive nature. It is unavoidable, and indeed favourable to IR. In particular, for full‐text retrieval, alternative semantic entities, including Salton et al.'s ‘passage retrieval’, are proposed to replace the traditional document record as the basic retrieval entity. These empirically observed phenomena of inconsistency and of semantic entities and values associated with data interpretation support strongly a cognitive approach to IR and the logical use of polyrepresentation, cognitive overlaps, and both data fusion and data diffusion.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 52 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1996

SØREN BRIER

This article is a contribution to the development of a comprehensive interdisciplinary theory of LIS in the hope of giving a more precise evaluation of its current problems. The…

426

Abstract

This article is a contribution to the development of a comprehensive interdisciplinary theory of LIS in the hope of giving a more precise evaluation of its current problems. The article describes an interdisciplinary framework for lis, especially information retrieval (IR), in a way that goes beyond the cognitivist ‘information processing paradigm’. The main problem of this paradigm is that its concept of information and language does not deal in a systematic way with how social and cultural dynamics set the contexts that determine the meaning of those signs and words that are the basic tools for the organisation and retrieving of documents in LIS. The paradigm does not distinguish clearly enough between how the computer manipulates signs and how librarians work with meaning in practice when they design and run document mediating systems. The ‘cognitive viewpoint’ of Ingwersen and Belkin makes clear that information is not objective, but rather only potential, until it is interpreted by an individual mind with its own internal mental world view and purposes. It facilitates further study of the social pragmatic conditions for the interpretation of concepts. This approach is not yet fully developed. The domain analytic paradigm of Hjørland and Albrechtsen is a conceptual realisation of an important aspect of this area. In the present paper we make a further development of a non‐reductionistic and interdisciplinary view of information and human social communication by texts in the light of second‐order cybernetics, where information is seen as ‘a difference which makes a difference’ for a living autopoietic (self‐organised, self‐creating) system. Other key ideas are from the semiotics of Peirce and also Warner. This is the understanding of signs as a triadic relation between an object, a representation and an interpretant. Information is the interpretation of signs by living, feeling, self‐organising, biological, psychological and social systems. Signification is created and con‐trolled in a cybernetic way within social systems and is communicated through what Luhmann calls generalised media, such as science and art. The modern socio‐linguistic concept ‘discourse communities’ and Wittgenstein's ‘language game’ concept give a further pragmatic description of the self‐organising system's dynamic that determines the meaning of words in a social context. As Blair and Liebenau and Backhouse point out in their work it is these semantic fields of signification that are the true pragmatic tools of knowledge organ‐isation and document retrieval. Methodologically they are the first systems to be analysed when designing document mediating systems as they set the context for the meaning of concepts. Several practical and analytical methods from linguistics and the sociology of knowledge can be used in combination with standard methodology to reveal the significant language games behind document mediation.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 52 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Article
Publication date: 20 March 2020

Linan Lei, Xiaobo Wu and Ziyan Tan

There is a research gap in strategic management regarding the complement from managerial cognition literature to the behavioral theory of firm, as well as linkage between cognitive

Abstract

Purpose

There is a research gap in strategic management regarding the complement from managerial cognition literature to the behavioral theory of firm, as well as linkage between cognitive structure and cognitive process of strategy formulation in the field of managerial cognition, which also calls for further exploration. The purpose of this paper is to construct a model from an integrated view for explaining the process of cognitive reconstruction under incremental changes.

Design/methodology/approach

Qualitative research is conducted in the form of 17 semi-structured interviews in four hidden champions operating in China. Based on the model generated from the literature review, this paper adopts the abductive logic for data analysis.

Findings

This paper draws the following conclusions. The cognitive structure is shaped by the changing environment and the performance feedback, the variance in structural attributes will affect whether the changing environment destructs the effectiveness of original cognitive structure or not, the centrality of cognitive structure will promote the efficiency of tried-and-true organizational adaptations to incremental changes, and cognitive structure reconstruction is the result of the recursive process of trial-and-error learning.

Originality/value

This paper proposes the model explaining the interaction mechanisms between cognitive structure and strategy formulation process. It also presents the iterative sense-making process for reconstructing cognitive structure in strategy formulation. Both of them extend the understanding on managerial cognition in organizational adaptations to incremental environmental changes.

Details

Chinese Management Studies, vol. 14 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1750-614X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 2 November 2022

Heather Yemm, Elizabeth Peel and Dawn Brooker

This paper aims to report the findings of a survey study exploring perceptions about cognitive impairment. These findings are relevant to public health campaigns and education…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to report the findings of a survey study exploring perceptions about cognitive impairment. These findings are relevant to public health campaigns and education programmes.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey exploring respondents’ views and knowledge about mild cognitive impairment (MCI) was circulated via UK networks. A total of 417 respondents completed the survey, including people living with cognitive impairment (n = 10), care partners (n = 23), older adults (n = 83), younger adults (n = 83), general health-care professionals (n = 96), dementia specialist health-care professionals (n = 48) and dementia specialists (n = 40).

Findings

Respondents were more confident in their knowledge about dementia than cognitive impairment but wanted more information about both conditions. Younger adults were uncertain about many aspects of MCI, and were the most likely to view MCI as a normal part of ageing. Diet (45.1%, n = 188) and personal behaviour (63.8%, n = 266) were the least endorsed possible causes of MCI, suggesting a lack of awareness of lifestyle choices as risk factors for MCI.

Originality/value

The results highlight the need to provide education and awareness raising about MCI to enable people to seek help in a timely manner and be able to make informed lifestyle choices that may reduce their risk of MCI and dementia. Implementing education about MCI and dementia in schools is a key target, as younger people were the most uncertain or misinformed about these topics. It is clear that further public health initiatives around MCI are both warranted and welcomed by the general public.

Details

Working with Older People, vol. 27 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1366-3666

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2020

Lorenzo Massa and Fredrik Hacklin

Business model innovation (BMI) constitutes a priority for managers across industries, but it represents a notoriously difficult innovation, with several challenges, many of which…

Abstract

Business model innovation (BMI) constitutes a priority for managers across industries, but it represents a notoriously difficult innovation, with several challenges, many of which are cognitive in nature. The received literature has variously suggested that one way to overcome challenges to BMI, including cognitive ones, and support the cognitive tasks is using visual representations. Against this background, we aim at offering a contribution to the emerging line of inquiry at the nexus between business models (BMs), cognition and visual representations. Specifically, we develop a new method for visual representation of the BM in support of simplification of the cognitive effort and neutralisation of cognitive barriers. The resulting representation – a network-based representation, anchored on the activity-system perspective and offering complementarity and centrality/periphery measures – allows to visually represent an existing BM as a network (nodes and linkages) of interdependent activities and to express information related to the degree of centrality/periphery of single activities (nodes) with respect to the rest of a BM configuration. This information, we argue, is potentially very valuable in supporting the cognitive tasks involved in business model reconfiguration (BMR). We guide the reader to progressively appreciate how the development of the proposed method for visual representation is anchored to two main characteristics of BMR, namely the discovery-driven nature of BMR and the path-dependent nature of BMR. We offer initial insights on the cognitive value of such a type of representation in relationship to the simplification of the cognitive effort and the neutralisation of cognitive barriers in BMR.

Article
Publication date: 27 March 2009

Fon Sim Ong, Yap‐Ying Lu, Masoud Abessi and David R. Phillips

The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between cognitive age and the adoption of defensive ageing consumption activities and its effect on life satisfaction in an…

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between cognitive age and the adoption of defensive ageing consumption activities and its effect on life satisfaction in an Asian context. The relationship between the antecedent variables of chronological age, biological age and transitional life events and cognitive age is examined.

Design/methodology/approach

Survey method. The study was conducted in Malaysia, an Asian country that is characterized as collectivistic. Data collection method used is convenience sampling method, using a sample of adults aged 40 years or older based on previous research. Measures used include cognitive age developed by Barak and Schiffman and validated by Wilkes. Life stage transitional events include a list of ten major life events that respondents experienced in the past 12 months. Biological changes are summated index of the number of biological changes (e.g. lengthy hospitalization or rehabilitation, hearing impairment) adopted from Mathur and Moschis. Defensive ageing consumption activities include skin care products, health supplements, beauty treatment and exercising, that are commonly adopted to fight ageing.

Findings

The paper finds that in the context of an Asian country, consumers view themselves to be several younger than their chronological age, consistent with past research. Biological changes, transitional life events and chronological age had a significant positive relationship with cognitive age, consistent with the findings of past research. To the extent that cognitive age was found to be positively related to transitional life events, regression analysis showed that life event was not a predictor of cognitive age, further contributing to the inconclusive evidence regarding the effect of life events on cognitive age. Research results supported the negative relationship between cognitive age and anti‐ageing consumption behaviour.

Practical implications

Study of this nature will help to shape marketers' approach to attract older consumers. Marketers should shift their focus away from regarding older consumers as old since older consumers tend to view themselves as younger than their chronological age. An understanding of how consumers perceive themselves in terms of their cognitive age is useful for segmentation. Knowing how older adults view “age” is useful for communication strategies.

Originality/value

This paper examines the effect of cognitive age on defensive ageing consumption activities in an Asian country, a collectivist society. The defensive consumption strategies included in this study were a range of products were commonly known but not tested. It extends the research by looking at the effect of defensive ageing consumption activities on life satisfaction.

Details

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, vol. 21 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-5855

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 December 2021

Lin Wang and Junping Qiu

The conditions that domain analysis becomes an academic school of information science (IS) are mature. Domain analysis is one of the most important foundations of IS. The purpose…

Abstract

Purpose

The conditions that domain analysis becomes an academic school of information science (IS) are mature. Domain analysis is one of the most important foundations of IS. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss metatheoretical and theoretical issues in the domain analytic paradigm in IS.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper conducts a systematic review of representative publications of domain analysis. The analysis considered degree theses, journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and other materials.

Findings

Domain analysis maintains that community is the new focus of IS research. Although domain analysis centers on the domain and community, theoretical concerns on the social and individual dimensions of IS are inherent in it by its using sociology as its important approach and socio-cognitive viewpoint. For these reasons domain analysis can integrate social–community–individual levels of IS discipline as a whole. The role of subject knowledge in IS is discussed from the perspective of domain analysis. Realistic pragmatism that forms the philosophical foundation of domain analysis is argued and the implications of these theories to IS are presented.

Originality/value

The intellectual evolving landscape of domain analysis during a quarter century is comprehensively reviewed. Over the past twenty-five years, domain analysis has established its academic status in the international IS circle. Being an important metatheory, paradigm and methodology, domain analysis becomes the theoretical foundation of IS research. This paper assesses the current state of domain analysis and shows the contributions of domain analysis to IS. It also aims to inspire further exploration.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 78 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 August 2001

Ellen Bonnevie

This article presents the semantic information theory, formulated by the philosopher Fred I. Dretske, as a contribution to the discussion of metatheories and their practical…

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Abstract

This article presents the semantic information theory, formulated by the philosopher Fred I. Dretske, as a contribution to the discussion of metatheories and their practical implications in the field of library and information science. Dretske’s theory is described in Knowledge and the flow of information. It is founded on mathematical communication theory but developed and elaborated into a cognitive, functionalistic theory, is individually oriented, and deals with the content of information. The topics are: the information process from perception to cognition, and how concept formation takes place in terms of digitisation. Other important issues are the concepts of information and knowledge, truth and meaning. Semantic information theory can be used as a frame of reference in order to explain, clarify and refute concepts currently used in library and information science, and as the basis for critical reviews of elements of the cognitive viewpoint in IR, primarily the notion of “potential information”. The main contribution of the theory lies in a clarification of concepts, but there are still problems regarding the practical applications. More research is needed to combine philosophical discussions with the practice of information and library science.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 57 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

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