Wang, P.: ¬An empirical study of knowledge structures of research topics (1999)
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- Abstract
- How knowledge is organized in human memory is of interest to both information science and cognitive science. The current information retrieval (IR) systems can be improved if we understand which conceptual structures could facilitate users in information processing and seeking. This project examined twenty-two cognitive maps on ten research topics generated by ten experts and eleven non-experts. Experts were those who had completed a research project on the topic prior to participating in this study, while non-experts were from the same academic department who were familiar with the topic but had not conducted any in-depth research on it. A research topic can be represented by a vocabulary and the relationships among the terms in the vocabulary. A cognitive map visualizes the vocabulary and its configuration in a plane. We observed that experts did not generate the maps much faster than non-experts. Both experts and non-experts modified the given vocabulary by either adding or dropping terms. The dominant configuration for the maps was top-down, while five maps were orientated in left-right or radical structure (from a center). Experts tended to use problem-oriented approach to organize the vocabulary while non-experts often applied discipline-oriented hierarchical structure. Despite of many differences in vocabulary and structure by individuals, there are terms clustered in a similar ways across maps indicating an agreed-upon semantic closeness among these terms
