Cognition in A Digital World

Massive changes are taking place in society surrounding the delivery of information to individuals and the way they process this information. At work, at home, and in schools, the Internet and the World Wide Web are altering the individual's work, his leisure time, her workplace, and their educational environments. All of these changes and their consequences have traditionally been investigated largely within the domain of sociology, semiotics, mass communication, and computer science. The perspective from cognitive psychology has been lacking. The purpose of this volume is to fill this gap. The focus of the book is the cognitive effects of the modern digital environment. In addition, questions are raised about what cognitive conditions must exist for adequately processing information in multimedia environments.

Internet use routinely involves the exchange of factual information but also a large amount of information with an interpersonal character is communicated. A socio-psychological perspective is needed to understand both kinds of communication, also to be able to design appropriate support tools. In Cognition in a Digital World, the emphasis is on the psychological analysis of interactive and continuing communication and discourse, rather than on the technical aspects of the individual's interaction at the interface.

The three main themes of this volume are:

*conditions and consequences of multimedia information processing by the individual;

*socio-psychological characteristics of information transfer over the World Wide Web; and

*analysis of computer-mediated collaborative communication.

Cognition in a Digital World will be of interest to a wide audience of researchers and students in the fields of cognitive science, education, communication sciences, computer science and the arts (discourse analysis).