Psychological aspects of information retrieval

The paper introduces the relationships between information retrieval (IR) and the psychological disciplines that contribute to the understanding of knowledge generation, acquisition and use. Other fields closely related to psychology-such as sociology, linguistics, philosophy, epistemology and AI-are briefly discussed in connection with the IR process and the 'best match' principle. Each major step in IR can be viewed as a problem-solving task for the individuals and system devices involved. Hence, perception, information processing, thinking, representation and categorization of knowledge, communicative behaviour, etc. are of major importance to IR. Initially, the paper provides a conceptual framework to which the different fields are related. This is followed by a short outline of three philosophical and epistemological approaches regarded as valuable to information science: the cognitive point of view; paradigm theories; Popper's World 3 model. The close relationship between the cognitive sciences and information science is emphasized and an evolutionary model concerned with views on the development of IR method is suggested. Finally, selected cognitive psychological elements and concepts of interest to IR are discussed, in particular perception and assimilation of information, LTM and STM processing, memory concepts and the dichotomy of IR and conceptual knowledge.