Premium
Interfacing Mind and Environment: The Central Role of Search in Cognition
Author(s) -
Fu WaiTat,
Hills Thomas,
Todd Peter M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
topics in cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.191
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1756-8765
pISSN - 1756-8757
DOI - 10.1111/tops.12153
Subject(s) - cognition , computer science , cognitive science , cognitive models of information retrieval , process (computing) , cognitive psychology , psychology , focus (optics) , data science , information retrieval , search engine , human–computer information retrieval , physics , neuroscience , optics , operating system
Search can be found in almost every cognitive activity, ranging across vision, memory retrieval, problem solving, decision making, foraging, and social interaction. Because of its ubiquity, research on search has a tendency to fragment into multiple areas of cognitive science. The proposed topic aims at providing integrative discussion of the central role of search from multiple perspectives. We focus on controlled search processes, which require (a) a goal, (b) uncertainty about the nature, location, or acquisition method of the objects to be searched for, and (c) a method for sampling through the search environment. While this definition of search is general and applicable to different domains, the specific mechanisms in the search process will likely differ. The goal of this issue is to compare and contrast how these search processes are similar and differ in different cognitive activities, with the goal of understanding the general nature of search in terms of the three characteristics stated above. We expect that given its cross‐domain nature, the topic on search will be of broad interest to cognitive scientists, including psychologists, behavioral ecologists, computer scientists, neuroscientists, linguists, and sociologists.