Online Information Processing Research Articles

Exploring the relevance and relative importance of interpreting aptitude constructs and their underlying factors: A data-driven tripartite investigation

AbstractThis study aims to explore the relevance and underlying factors of an array of interpreting aptitude constructs, and, on that basis, the collective and group-specific perception of their relative importance. To meet the research purposes, a questionnaire survey was designed and distributed to interpreting trainers, trainees and professional interpreters, asking respondents to evaluate the relative importance of 40 aptitude constructs drawn from an extensive literature review. A total of 769 valid responses were collected. An explorative factor analysis retained 23 constructs divided into three factors focusing on cognitive skills for online information processing, personality traits and temperaments, and foundational linguistic skills respectively. While personality traits and temperaments were regarded as a stable and distinctive dimension of interpreting aptitude, cognitive skills for information processing were viewed as the most important factor. Particularly, listening and speaking in B enjoyed the highest rating. Although statistically significant differences existed in the relative importance of certain constructs, the substantive differences indicated by the effect sizes were small. Compared with trainees, trainers and professional interpreters demonstrated a more sharpened awareness of market demands and industrial priorities, but otherwise the three groups converged more than they diverged in the evaluation of aptitude constructs and factors.

The cheese was green with… envy: An EEG study on minimal fictional descriptions

Inconsistent information can be hard to understand, but in cases like fiction readers can integrate it with little to no difficulties. The present study aimed at examining if perspective switching can take place when only a minimal fictional description is provided (fictional world condition), as compared with general world knowledge (real world condition). Participants read sentences where food items had animated or inanimate features while EEG was recorded and performed a sentence completion task to evaluate recall. In the real-world condition, the N400 was significantly larger for sentences incongruent, rather than congruent, with general world knowledge. In the fictional world condition, the N400 elicited by congruent and incongruent sentences did not differ, confirming that the minimal description impacted online information processing. Information consistent with general knowledge was better recalled in both conditions. The current results highlight how contextual information is integrated during sentence comprehension.

Validation of newly developed tasks for the assessment of generic Critical Online Reasoning (COR) of university students and graduates

In recent decades, the acquisition of information has evolved substantially and fundamentally affects students’ use of information, so that the Internet has become one of the most important sources of information for learning. However, learning with freely accessible online resources also poses challenges, such as vast amounts of partially unstructured, untrustworthy, or biased information. To successfully learn by using the Internet, students therefore require specific skills for selecting, processing, and evaluating the online information, e.g., to distinguish trustworthy from distorted or biased information and for judging its relevance with regard to the topic and task at hand. Despite the central importance of these skills, their assessment in higher education is still an emerging field. In this paper, we present the newly defined theoretical-conceptual framework Critical Online Reasoning (COR). Based on this framework, a corresponding performance assessment, Critical Online Reasoning Assessment (CORA), was newly developed and underwent first steps of validation in accordance with the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. We first provide an overview of the previous validation results and then expand them by including further analyses of the validity aspects “internal test structure” and “relations with other variables”. To investigate the internal test structure, we conducted variance component analyses based on the generalizability theory with a sample of 125 students and investigated the relations with other variables by means of correlation analyses. The results show correlations with external criteria as expected and confirm that the CORA scores reflect the different test performances of the participants and are not significantly biased by modalities of the assessment. With these new analyses, this study substantially contributes to previous research by providing comprehensive evidence for the validity of this new performance assessment that validly assesses the complex multifaceted construct of critical online reasoning among university students and graduates. CORA results provide unique insights into the interplay between features of online information acquisition and processing, learning environments, and the cognitive and metacognitive requirements for critically reasoning from online information in university students and young professionals.

Digital Media Literacy In the Age of Mis/Disinformation: The Case of Moroccan University Students

This paper set out to explore online users' perceptions, attitudes, and practices towards mis/disinformation on social networking sites and investigate how they engage with, identify, and evaluate information disorder on social networking sites. The correlation study provides empirical insights into the complex relationship between digital media literacy and online information processing. To this end, a web-based survey was administered to gauge Moroccan undergraduate students' digital media literacy skills, particularly in what regards their ability to identify and evaluate the credibility of information online. The data obtained are consistent with the hypothesis guiding this research that there is a significant relationship between digital media literacy skills (DMLS) and students' ability to identify information disorder online (IDO). Based on the empirical findings, important implications and strategies for higher education institutions are addressed to help students become more digitally media literate consumers of information.

Differences in cognition, short-chain fatty acids and related metabolites in pregnant versus non-pregnant women: a cross-sectional study

BackgroundPregnancy induces cognitive reorganization which can lead to mental disorders. The aim of this study is to determine differences in cognitive scores, short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and related metabolites between pregnant and non-pregnant participants.MethodsThis cross-sectional study included 67 full-term pregnant women and 31 non-pregnant women. We compared scores of mental state and cognitive assessment tests, as well as serum concentrations of SCFAs, hormones, inflammatory factors, and neurotransmitters between these groups.ResultsScores for information processing speed, immediate visual memory, motor response speed and accuracy, execution ability and verbal use ability in the pregnant group were lower than those in the non-pregnant group (p < 0.05 for all tests). Total serum SCFAs in the pregnant group were significantly lower than those in the non-pregnant group (P = 0.031). Among them, acetate and propionate were significantly decreased (P = 0.013 and 0.037, respectively) whereas butyrate was significantly increased (P = 0.035). Serum peptide YY, glucagon-like peptide-1, γ-aminobutyric acid, and dopamine showed no differences between the two groups. However, cortisol, adrenocorticotropic hormone, and acetylcholine were significantly increased in the pregnant group as compared with the non-pregnant group (P = 0.039, 0.016, and 0.012, respectively). Tumor necrosis factor-α was increased and interleukin-10 significantly decreased in the pregnant group (P = 0.045 and 0.019, respectively).ConclusionAccording to our study findings, cognitive reorganization in the third trimester of pregnancy showed that both the passive storage capacity of working memory and the executive function of online information processing were decreased to varying degrees. At the same time, the changes in total SCFAs, the proportions of SCFAs and related metabolites were also detected. These changes in the internal environment may be increasing the risk of perinatal mental illness.

Aggregation of multidimensional data for the decision support process for the management of microgrids with renewable energy sources

The object of research is the process of processing and storing data when making decisions on managing the life cycle of electricity generation and consumption in microgrids with renewable energy sources. The prospects of the study are due to the fact that in order to provide a full-fledged decision support process in the management of microgrids with renewable energy sources, it is necessary to consolidate and manipulate multidimensional data in multithreading and online information processing. To solve the problem, the theoretical methods of analysis, abstraction, induction and deduction were used. To ensure multidimensionality and multithreading of data processing, it is proposed to develop a data warehouse based on the snowflake data model. Efficiency of information processing in real time is provided by an operational database built on the principle of OLTP. The organization of the joint work of the data warehouse with the operational database, the consolidation and manipulation of data is provided by triggers. The result of the work is a data warehouse that will be used in the decision support system for managing energy microgrids, which will improve the efficiency of data processing and storage. This is achieved by combining the work of a centralized data warehouse with an operational database, as well as the use of a separate data mart for each user of the system. The practical significance of the work lies in the fact that the data warehouse will become part of the decision support system for processing information about the life cycle of energy in the management of energy infrastructure. Compared to using a single database for a decision support system, this approach ensures the speed of working with data and allows differentiating between the use of a data warehouse for analytics and data manipulation operations. The data warehouse was deployed in a cloud environment on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform and the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) web service. Secure access to client data is implemented using data marts.

Discovering signals of platform failure risks from customer sentiment: the case of online P2P lending

PurposeDigital platforms have grown significantly in recent years. Although high platform failure risks (PFR) have plagued the industry, the literature has only given this issue scant treatment. Customer sentiments are crucial for platforms and have a growing body of knowledge on its analysis. However, previous studies have overlooked rich contextual information emb`edded in user-generated content (UGC). Confronting the research gap of digital platform failure and drawbacks of customer sentiment analysis, we aim to detect signals of PFR based on our advanced customer sentiment analysis approach for UGC and to illustrate how customer sentiments could predict PFR.Design/methodology/approachWe develop a deep-learning based approach to improve the accuracy of customer sentiment analysis for further predicting PFR. We leverage a unique dataset of online P2P lending, i.e., a typical setting of transactional digital platforms, including 97,876 pieces of UGC for 2,467 platforms from 2011 to 2018.FindingsOur results show that the proposed approach can improve the accuracy of measuring customer sentiment by integrating word embedding technique and bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM). On top of that, we show that customer sentiment can improve the accuracy for predicting PFR by 10.96%. Additionally, we do not only focus on a single type of customer sentiment in a static view. We discuss how the predictive power varies across positive, neutral, negative customer sentiments, and during different time periods.Originality/valueOur research results contribute to the literature stream on digital platform failure with online information processing and offer implications for digital platform risk management with advanced customer sentiment analysis.

Undergraduate Students' Critical Online Reasoning-Process Mining Analysis.

To successfully learn using open Internet resources, students must be able to critically search, evaluate and select online information, and verify sources. Defined as critical online reasoning (COR), this construct is operationalized on two levels in our study: (1) the student level using the newly developed Critical Online Reasoning Assessment (CORA), and (2) the online information processing level using event log data, including gaze durations and fixations. The written responses of 32 students for one CORA task were scored by three independent raters. The resulting score was operationalized as “task performance,” whereas the gaze fixations and durations were defined as indicators of “process performance.” Following a person-oriented approach, we conducted a process mining (PM) analysis, as well as a latent class analysis (LCA) to test whether—following the dual-process theory—the undergraduates could be distinguished into two groups based on both their process and task performance. Using PM, the process performance of all 32 students was visualized and compared, indicating two distinct response process patterns. One group of students (11), defined as “strategic information processers,” processed online information more comprehensively, as well as more efficiently, which was also reflected in their higher task scores. In contrast, the distributions of the process performance variables for the other group (21), defined as “avoidance information processers,” indicated a poorer process performance, which was also reflected in their lower task scores. In the LCA, where two student groups were empirically distinguished by combining the process performance indicators and the task score as a joint discriminant criterion, we confirmed these two COR profiles, which were reflected in high vs. low process and task performances. The estimated parameters indicated that high-performing students were significantly more efficient at conducting strategic information processing, as reflected in their higher process performance. These findings are so far based on quantitative analyses using event log data. To enable a more differentiated analysis of students’ visual attention dynamics, more in-depth qualitative research of the identified student profiles in terms of COR will be required.

Learning to Fly Through Informational Turbulence: Critical Thinking and the Case of the Minimum Wage

The paper addresses online reasoning and information processing with respect to a much debated issue: the pros and cons of the minimum wage. Like with all controversial issues, one can easily remain in a self-reinforcing bubble, once one has taken sides, and immunize oneself against criticism. Paradoxically, the more information we have at our disposal, the easier this gets (Roetzel, 2019). The only (and possibly universal) antidote seems to be “critical thinking” (Ennis, 1987; 2011a, b). However, critical thinking is a very broad concept, purported to include diverse kinds of information processing, and it is also thought to be content-specific. Therefore, we aim at addressing both understanding of content knowledge and reasoning processes. We pursue three goals with this paper: First, we conduct a conceptual analysis of the learning content and of reasoning patterns for and against the minimum wage. Second, we explicate an inferential framework that can be applied for processes of critical thinking. Third, teaching strategies are discussed to support reasoning processes and to promote critical thinking skills.

Performance Assessment of Critical Thinking: Conceptualization, Design, and Implementation

Enhancing students’ critical thinking (CT) skills is an essential goal of higher education. This article presents a systematic approach to conceptualizing and measuring CT. CT generally comprises the following mental processes: identifying, evaluating, and analyzing a problem; interpreting information; synthesizing evidence; and reporting a conclusion. We further posit that CT also involves dealing with dilemmas involving ambiguity or conflicts among principles and contradictory information. We argue that performance assessment provides the most realistic—and most credible—approach to measuring CT. From this conceptualization and construct definition, we describe one possible framework for building performance assessments of CT with particular attention to extended performance tasks within the assessment system. The framework is a product of an ongoing, collaborative effort, the International Performance Assessment of Learning (iPAL). The framework comprises four main ingredients: (1) The storyline describes a carefully curated version of a complex, real-world situation. (2) A portfolio of documents in a range of formats, drawn from multiple sources chosen to have specific characteristics. (3) The challenge frames the task to be accomplished. (4) The scoring rubric which comprises a set of scales each linked to a facet of the construct. We discuss a number of use cases, as well as the challenges that arise with the use and valid interpretation of performance assessments. The final section presents elements of the iPAL research program that involve various refinements and extensions of the assessment framework, a number of empirical studies, along with linkages to current work in online reading and information processing.

Are negative and positive reviews regarding apparel fit influential?

PurposeThe purpose of the current study is to explore how valenced fit reviews affect the consumer decision-making process during online apparel shopping.Design/methodology/approachA single factor (valence of fit review) within-subject experimental design was employed to examine how the valenced fit review (negative vs positive) affects the consumer online purchase decision process. A mock website was created to simulate the online shopping environment through four steps for developing a stimulus website for the main study. The data were analyzed using repeated multivariate analysis of variance and structural equation modeling.FindingsA total of 418 female consumers completed an online self-administrated survey. Results showed that positive fit review was more compelling than negative fit review for female consumers when they like the apparel product. Two aspects of information credibility (review and site credibility) and confidence in purchase decision evoked by both fit reviews and overall product information were significant determinants of the consumer purchase decision process in increasing consumers’ future purchase intentions through attitude to the online retailer.Originality/valueThe current study was an attempt to fill the gap in knowledge regarding the crucial role of fit reviews in apparel product purchase decisions in an online context. This study confirmed the type of fit reviews that would be influential on female consumers’ online purchase decision-making process for apparel products when they liked the apparel product, supporting positive confirmation bias from the information processing point of view. This study contributed to the importance of the two concepts (i.e. credibility and confidence in the purchase decision) in online information processing and purchase decision-making process.

Contributing factors to increased susceptibility to social media phishing attacks

Background: The migration of phishing scams to social media platforms poses a serious information security threat to social media users. Users often remain unaware of the various phishing threats on social media and consequently they thoughtlessly engage on these platforms. Objectives: The objective of this article was to identify the factors that contribute to an increased susceptibility to social media phishing attacks and propose a model to reduce this susceptibility. Method: A systematic literature review was conducted in Emerald Insight, ScienceDirect and Google Scholar by using a search string. The identified articles underwent two rounds of screening and the articles thus included moved on to a quality assessment round. Finally, these articles were imported into MAXQDA where a content analysis was conducted, which involved extracting, coding and analysing the relevant data. Results: The final 25 articles included in the study indicated that women with low technical and security knowledge between the age of 18 and 25, who habitually use social media and process content heuristically, are more susceptible to phishing attacks. The insights gained from conducting this review resulted in developing a model that highlights the individuals who are most susceptible to phishing attacks on social media. Conclusion: This article concludes that certain people are more susceptible to phishing attacks on social media as a result of their online habits, information processing, demographics, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) knowledge and personality traits. As such, these identified people should be more aware that they fall into this susceptibility group and thus should behave more cautiously when engaging on social media platforms.

How can you persuade me online? The impact of goal-driven motivations on attention to online information

Individuals are increasingly using the internet to communicate online with many of their interactions being persuasive. Whilst there is some evidence to suggest that persuasion can occur online it is still unclear as to the underlying mechanisms driving this process. The current study aims to address this by examining individuals’ attention to, and motivations to process, online information. To achieve this, an information recall paradigm was adopted whereby an undergraduate student sample (n = 91) were asked to recall information which had been presented to them in pre-scripted personally-relevant scenarios. Results identified that peripheral (e.g. contextual) cues activated goal-driven motivations significantly increasing attention to message content (i.e. central information) when personal benefits were implied. Conversely, when personal costs were implied these effects were reversed and information processing significantly attenuated. These results serve to reinforce the notion that online information processing is motivated by goal-driven behaviour and are the first to identify how goals impact on information processing. The findings have implications for both organisations and individuals who use the internet for persuasive purposes (e.g. political campaigning) and are discussed in relation to the dominant theories of persuasion and how they can explain online persuasion.

Does Customization Benefit Brand Evaluation When Consumers Experience Psychological Uncertainty?

The online environment is filled with uncertain situations. Although digital interface plays an important role in online information processing, limited research has explored whether digital interface could influence how consumers deal with the psychological state of uncertainty in the online environment. The present study focuses on customization as an important feature of digital interface. A lab experiment was conducted to analyze the interplay between psychological uncertainty, interface customization, and the individual trait of uncertainty avoidance on consumers’ online brand evaluation. The results indicated that participants with a strong tendency of uncertainty avoidance evaluated a brand on a customized website more favorably than a non-customized website when they experienced psychological uncertainty. Such effects were not observed among participants with a weak tendency of uncertainty avoidance.

Adaptive dependability of information management systems

The paper examines the reliability of an information management system as its ability to provide the required services that can be justifiably trusted. It is assumed that the system functions without an operator. The aim is to ensure the dependability of a multimodule control system, when the problem-solving results are affected by failures, faults and errors of problem-solution by the system’s computation modules (CMs). Conventional fault tolerance methods do not provide the desired effect, as even under infinite structural redundancy yet real capabilities of on-line detection of CM failures or faults the system’s dependability is significantly lower than expected. The paper proposes and evaluates the methods of adaptive dependability. They are to ensure the observability of control systems under limited capabilities of component CM operability supervision, as well as achieving the required levels of dependability of information management systems in cases of insignificant float time and structural redundancy. These goals are achieved through active (and automatic) reassignment of the available computational resources for on-line information processing. The methods of adaptive dependability enable – with no interruption of computational processes and while solving real-world problems – timely automatic detection and elimination of failures, faults of CMs and errors in the solution of specified problems through on-line localization of faulty modules and subsequent automatic reconfiguration of the system with the elimination of such modules from operation.

A neural computing approach to the construction of information credibility assessments for online social networks

Information credibility assessment has traditionally been understood in the online information processing context. This study extends this literature by exploring information credibility assessment mechanisms in the online social network context. In doing so, it responds to the emerging call for an understanding of the online social network context under the operational mechanism of information credibility assessment. Specifically, this study proposes a neural computing approach based on the stimulate–organism–response framework to determine the process, strategy and clue of online social network information assessment. Drawing on the theory of the Technology Acceptance Model and the theory of reasoned action, and based on a survey of 399 returned online questionnaires, we find that the involvement of online social network information, information sources and information transfer channels has a significant positive correlation with information usefulness and credibility, while information scenarios have no significant impact on usefulness and credibility, and the credibility of information is significant to the user’s information adoption behavior. Different from the predictions made in the literature, the information scenario does not affect information credibility and information usefulness. Conclusions and academic and practical implications are discussed.

Identity on Social Networks as a Cue: Identity, Retweets, and Credibility

The current study investigates how social media affordances influence individuals’ source credibility perceptions in the presence of risk information, specifically examining how bandwagon heuristics interact with different identity heuristics at the individual level. The MAIN model and warranting theory serve as the theoretical framework to examine the effects of bandwagon cues and identity cues embedded in retweets and users’ profile pages for health and risk online information processing. A posttest-only experiment with a self-report questionnaire was administered to participants. Results indicate that different online heuristic cues impact the judgments of competence, goodwill, and trustworthiness. Authority cues strongly influenced source credibility perceptions. A reverse-bandwagon effect was observed in influencing source credibility judgments.

Does language matter? A cross-national comparison of the moderating effect of language on website information-processing

The globalized nature of markets has provoked interest in whether cultural difference may affect how consumers process the information via websites. Language, as a vehicle for cultural values, is an important factor in their design and the messages they convey. The present study analyzes how language moderates the relationships between online perceived risk, perceived usability and satisfaction online. To fulfill the research aim, the work focuses on two languages that pertain to countries with markedly different cultural values. It employs a between-subjects experimental design, with the processing language (Spanish vs. English) as the independent variable. The study finds that online information-processing is moderated by the language in which users process information. It also demonstrates that firms can reduce the negative effect of perceived risk on perceived usability (and on satisfaction online) using the language known by the user that carries cultural values associated with a lower level of uncertainty avoidance.

Online Target Recognition for Time-Sensitive Space Information Networks

The key difficulties of online target recognition task for space information networks lie in the contradiction between time-sensitive response requirement and resource constraints(e.g., computation resource, communication resource, and training samples). To deal with the above problems, an effective online target recognizing approach is proposed, which seamlessly integrates fast online information processing task and efficient target-specific high-rate compression task. The proposed approach begins with enhancing the target-background separability by introducing intraclass and interclass couples, the new model adapted for the hospt spot image is then obtained by capturing the relation between the online target data and the massive historical data. The light-weight target-specific information is efficiently transmitted into the ground system, and the whole scene is capable of being recovered while the details of targets are being preserved. Compared with the traditional target recognition methods, the proposed approach is more promising for time-sensitive space information networks. The experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Toward an understanding of online information processing in e-tourism: does national culture matter?

ABSTRACTTourism is undoubtedly among the industries that better reflect the effects of globalization, technological advances (i.e. the Internet) being one of the most relevant drivers. Given the current market saturation of this sector, a better understanding of how tourists from different cultures process online information and forge their attitudes and behavioral intentions is called for. Nevertheless, national culture may have a major influence on the effectiveness of online tourist marketing activities. This study contributes to the extant body of knowledge via the analysis of the influence of perceived risk on how tourists process the information while browsing a tourist destination website, form their attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the destination. The effect of national culture on such antecedents is examined via a cross-cultural research to compare Spanish and British cultures. A theoretical model is proposed to integrate the effect of perceived risk and variables regarding technology acceptance on tourist responses.