Metacognition and Psychology of Search

Introduction

Scholars, even before the inception of psychology as an academic discipline, were intrigued by the self-reflective ability of the human mind. From St. Augustine to Descartes and William James to Vygotsky, this topic is known to have piqued the interest of many philosophers and thinkers. However, it was not until the work of developmental psychologist John Flavell that the term metacognition gained recognition. Metacognition is the knowledge or awareness humans have about their own cognitive processes (Brown, 1978; Flavell, 1979). Simply put, it can be defined as how humans think about thinking. According to Livingston (2003), it refers to “higher order thinking” that is often “associated with intelligence”. 

From an evolutionary point of view, the ability of the human mind to gain reflective control over its actions must have given it a special ability to audit its decisions, choices, and courses of action and quickly rectify them, if needed. Metcalfe (2008) suggests that this ability would “have allowed our ancestors to survive under circumstances fatal to other animals.” 

This paper introduces the components of metacognition and briefly touches upon different metacognitive skills. It then delves deep into the psychology of search, a metacognitive skill, and examines its various aspects like information architecture, wayfinding, reading strategies, online reading, information foraging theory, information scent, top-down and bottom-up approaches, and typography. In the final part of the paper, building on these theoretical aspects, Bentley University’s graduate admission website has been reviewed.

Components of Metacognition

Metacognition can be classified into three primary components: (1) metacognitive knowledge, (2) metacognitive regulation, and (3) metacognitive experiences (Flavell, 1979; Brown, 1987; Baker, 1991; Livingston, 2003). While metacognitive knowledge refers to what an individual understands about cognition, Schraw and Moshman (1995) define metacognitive regulation as “how one uses that knowledge to regulate cognition.” Metacognitive experiences can help people in decision making and forming judgments. Schwarz (2004) describes it as “the ease or difficulty of recall and thought generation and the fluency with which new information can be processed.”

Metacognitive knowledge consists of three variables: (1) person – everything a person understands about his own shortcomings and learning processes and also about other people as cognitive processors (Flavell, 1979), (2) task – “knowledge about the nature of the task” and the “processing demands” it will place on an individual (Livingston, 2003), and  (3) strategy – knowledge about cognitive and metacognitive strategies and the understanding of when and where to use them. Metacognitive regulation refers to the metacognitive activities that can help a person control, oversee, and monitor their thinking or learning. It includes three skills: (1) planning – selecting suitable strategies and allocating resources, (2) monitoring – self-awareness of understanding and task performance, and (3) evaluation – the assessment of the final outcome of a task (Jacobs & Paris, 1987). 

Metacognitive Skills

While people develop metacognitive knowledge at an early stage, metacognitive skills are generally learnt during later stages of development (Flavell & Wellman, 1975; Fisher, 1998). Metacognitive skills are higher level processes applied consciously to manipulate cognitive processes before, after, or during a cognitive activity (Brown, 1978; Kluwe, 1987). These skills can be divided into various categories like learning styles, decision making, psychology of search, and literacy. The focus of this paper is psychology of search, which explores how people use search to find answers to what they are specifically looking for.

Psychology of Search

            Human beings are “informavores”; we constantly seek, collect, distribute, and consume information (Pirolli & Card, 1999). More and more of what we do today involves dealing with some kind of information. The World Wide Web has made a plethora of information readily available to people; however, the human information processing capacity is limited. It is therefore important to organize information in such a way that searching it is effortless. As the goal of search is to discover answers, information should not only be accessible, but it should also be easy to find, navigate, and comprehend.

Information Architecture and Wayfinding

Like all houses have an architecture, every website has an information architecture (IA). IA is used to organize, structure, and label information and content so that users can effortlessly search and access a website (Rosenfeld & Morville, 2002). To ensure this, information architects use wayfinding (a term borrowed from architecture) that helps users navigate from one point to another. With the help of cues, wayfinding allows users to search and understand: (1) where they are, (2) where are the things they are looking for, (3) how can they get those things, and (4) where they have already looked. (Arthur & Passini, 1992; Wodtke & Govella, 2011). 

Reading Strategies and Online Reading

While IA and wayfinding can help organize information, a user may find it difficult to search for information on a content-heavy website or page. This is where reading strategies come into play. One of the most important ways in which humans interact with computers is by online reading. This type of reading is not the same as reading from a book or a piece of paper. Humans, when reading online or on a screen, metacognitively use different reading strategies so that they can quickly grasp the content, increase their efficiency, and reach their goals (Weinschenk, 2015). Some of these strategies include skimming, scanning, and searching. Other strategies like receptive reading and critical reading are used for deeper understanding and are done for thorough comprehension and evaluation respectively.

As the vast amount of information available online often surpasses the time available to read content, users often employ skimming, a rapid reading strategy that allows them to focus on the most important sections of the text by omitting and skipping words, paragraphs, or pages (Duggan & Payne, 2011). While scanning involves quickly finding specific information, searching involves paying attention to the meaning of specific words or expressions.

Information Foraging Theory

Similar to reading strategies, information foraging theory focuses on cherry-picking and finding useful information. It is interesting to note the striking parallels between a human’s metacognitive skills and an animal’s foraging skills (Metcalfe & Jacobs, 2009). This is best described by Hills (2006) as “what was once foraging in physical space for tangible resources, became, over evolutionary time, foraging in the cognitive space for information related to those resources”. Information Foraging Theory proposes that whenever possible people alter their strategies and environment to maximize the amount of valuable information they receive (Pirolli & Card, 1995). It is derived from optimal foraging theory, a behavioral model that talks about the strategy hunters and gatherers use to achieve their desired goal by expending as little energy as possible (Pyke, 1984). While gatherers are mostly concerned with signs, hunters focus primarily on scents. When searching for information, these scents or signs, in the form of words, pictures, or sounds, help users understand whether or not their search is leading to expected results.

Information Foraging Theory, in essence, presents a cost and benefit analysis that is involved in finding relevant information. It is built on two key components: 1) adaptation analysis of the information foraging problem, and 2) a detailed process model called ACT-IF (adaptive control of thought in information foraging). The adaptation analysis draws upon analogies for foraging for food. It develops a) Information patches - the sequential and spatial arrangement in which information is arranged, b) Information scents - that help evaluate information value based on navigation cues. Information scent can lead users to the content they are seeking (Chi, Pirolli, Chen, & Pitkow, 2001), and c) Information diet - which addresses how we decide and select one information source over another. ACT-IF proposes a mechanism for judging the relevance of text information displayed on a screen (Pirolli & Card, 1999). It was proposed to evaluate information retrieval technology to fit the ongoing individual actions of people interacting with information sources. It is a cognitive model for understanding information foraging that gauges the efficiency of information retrieval by assessing information scent. 

Designing for Search

When designing for search, the focus should be on the top-down rather than bottom-up approach. This is because bottom-up approach is pre-attentive and focuses primarily on primitive elements and pre-attentive design patterns. However, a top-down approach focuses on a user’s expectations and mental models. It helps assessing the information scent and foraging the right information. Designers should design websites in such a way that users are easily able to skim and scan the content. The font type and font size should therefore be legible and line length and line spacing should be appropriate (Beymer, Russell, & Orton, 2008). For skimming, searching, and scanning, we should make sure that we are using bulleted lists, scan columns, nested indents, proper justification, headers, and footers. If we don’t do that, we would force users to use the bottom-up approach and read content word by word. This would require unnecessary resource, work against the information foraging theory, and ultimately drive users away from their goal. 

Bentley University Graduate Admission Website: A Design Review

Bentley University is a leading business school in the US that offers programs at graduate and undergraduate levels. For the purpose of this paper, Bentley University’s graduate admission website has been reviewed.

The typical user of the graduate admission website would be a prospective international student who is looking for the right MBA program for himself. He would probably be a young person in his 20s who is planning to study in the US for the first time. His goal would be to search for information related to the various MBA program formats Bentley offers, find out if he is eligible for a GMAT waiver or not, and check the total tuition fee.

When a new user opens the homepage of the graduate admission website, he can see a student’s photograph with a short quote, a hamburger menu on the top left corner, and “Apply” and “Ask Admissions” buttons on the top right corner. Although skimming and scanning the text and images is fairly simple, foraging for the information a person is actually looking for doesn’t seem apparent. A user would be specifically looking for MBA programs.

As discussed earlier, when designing for search, designers should focus on the top-down and not bottom-up approach. The homepage looks good from a bottom-up perspective (use of white space, primitive, and pre-attentive design), but it does not really adhere to the top-down approach. Since this is a graduate admission website, a user’s expectation and mental model would be to find information related to the programs as soon as he opens the homepage. Moreover, when a user sees the hamburger menu on the top left corner, he would instinctively click on it rather than scrolling down.

Clicking on the hamburger menu does not directly lead the user to the page or content he is searching for, and it can therefore be said that wayfinding is somewhat difficult on the homepage. Even though the Bentley icon on top left corner tells a user that he is on the graduate admission website and clicking on the hamburger menu fades the home screen to show where the user has already looked, he would not able to quickly search or find the exact cues or keywords he is looking for. Although “master’s programs” is what a user would select, the different font type and size of “MS programs” would first draw a user’s attention. Since “MBA” is written in a font that is not clearly legible, a user may think that this program is not offered.

Searching and finding what a user is looking for would involve multiple steps: he would have to click the Hamburger menu>Masters Programs>MBA>Which MBA Is Right For You? Foraging information about the right MBA program format would take time since the information scent is not that evident. As the focus of the graduate admission website and its users is primarily on the programs offered at Bentley, it would make sense to design it for search, focusing on the top-down approaches. It would be much easier for a user to search the website if, instead of a hamburger menu, there was a top navigation bar with all the programs or at least MBA and MS listed there. 

On the MBA page, the icons on the top left corner can confuse a new user. Nothing happens or changes when a user hovers over these icons or clicks on them. If a user is searching for the right program format, he would expect a list mentioning all the program formats. He would, however, have to read every word written as the descriptive text which is not easy to skim or scan. Although the design of the page is good from a bottom-up perspective, it misses out on some elements of the top-down approach. The font is small but legible, however, the text is not justified. Providing a bulleted list of different program formats would be easier for a user to skim through. The important portions of the text could also be highlighted for better clarity. Also, a user would find wayfinding difficult since he does not know where exactly he is in the search process. Adding breadcrumbs could perhaps be useful in navigating the website and also wayfinding.

A great feature on the MBA page is the chatbot that helps a user find out if he/she qualifies for a GMAT waiver. Even when a user scrolls down the page, he can find the chatbot icon and text message at the bottom right corner. Since a prospective student would want to search for such information, the chatbot option would quickly allow him to find out whether he is eligible or not. The use of buttons instead of text fields in the chat feature makes chatting much easier.

Another great feature on the MBA page is the top navigation bar that can help a user quickly search for program highlights, curriculum, outcomes, and tuition. For someone who wants to find out the tuition fee, foraging for content is fairly simple and all a user needs to do is follow the scent that leads to the content he is searching for. When searching for tuition fee, a user would be looking for numbers. The larger font size of numbers helps a user quickly skim and scan the total tuition. The information architecture of this page is good, and the content is organized in such a way that it makes it easy for a user to find exactly what he is looking for.

Overall, Bentley University’s graduate admission website is well-designed, but the focus needs to be on top-down approach and designing it for search. The overall information architecture can be improved so that it is easy to find the scent, forage information, and quickly skim and scan content. At a metacognitive level, wayfinding can be improved and searching for certain critical elements like programs should be effortless.

Conclusion

In summary, metacognition enables users to be aware of how they search for information and also to continuously evaluate and adapt metacognitive skills to make the search increasingly effective. As digitally available information attracts more and more users and creates a complex information ecology of hundreds and millions of webpages (Chi et al., 2001), it is critical to keep in mind the elements of psychology of search and metacognition as discussed above. A thoughtful employment of these principles will help users to get information in time and also to manage their own searching process more efficiently.

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