University of Texas at Austin

Rutgers will use its grant to support an Early Career Development Project, in which Jacek Gwizdka will develop and validate a new framework for non-intrusive, continuous monitoring and assessment of cognitive load (mental effort) experienced by users of digital libraries. This framework will then be validated in an experiment where cognitive load will be controlled. After successful validation, a second experiment will be conducted, in which the developed framework will be applied to assessing cognitive load in realistic information seeking scenarios. This project will result in a new understanding of the mental effort required by those engaged in information seeking. Results of the study will inform the design of digital libraries and other interactive information systems.