O caminhar faz a trilha: o comportamento de busca da informação sob o enfoque da cognição situada

Abstract

In the field of information science, the studies of information seeking are mainly based in the traditional cognitive approaches. These approaches emphasize the individual cognitive frames of the information users and consider the information behavior as constituted of phases which are lived by the individual while resolving problematic situations or cognitive gaps, which are overcome by the assimilation of information. Opposing this traditional view, a perspective grounded on the principlesof situated cognition makes possible to approach the information user in multiple dimensions (individual, social, emotional and linguistic) and understand information seeking as a social, experiential, historic and contingent process. Under this view, this study intended to investigate the information-seeking behavior of persons in charge of organizational decision-making. For achieving this goal, in the first stage of this study, an equivocal, unexpected and ill-defined decision-making situation wasselected and characterized from situations described by managers of medium-seized firms in Belo Horizonte city. This situation was the case study. In the second stage of the methodology employed, semi-structured interviews were made with the six managers who lived the situation. Analysis of the empirical data revealed that the information-seeking behavior of the interviewed executives, in the specific situation, was influenced by their life histories, their emotional dispositions and the relations and interrelations established with other subjects. It was argued that situated cognition is an innovative approach for the study of information-seeking behavior, which contributes, significantly, for the user studies in the field of information science.