Effects of digital information characteristics on information selection and mental models

This project investigates factors which affect the process of information seeking, processing and the resulting mental models in documents. In particular, the project focuses on effects of the task structure. and document structure (classic document structures versus typically digital structures) on the type of information that is selected and the order in which it is selected. Also, effects of multimodal elements on information selection are studied. The questions will be addressed in a series of experiments. Different instruments for registering information selection and processing will be used: thinking aloud techniques, different ways of key and mouse logging, and eye tracking. By these means the project studies the information types that are selected, the order of selecting information and the processing strategies used.