They Got to "Ask-Me-Anything." So, What Did They Want to Know?

What did they know, and when did they know it?

voted to ease monetary policy, which was widely reported as a lowering of interest rates. Although some interest rates fell with the Fed' s action, the declines were generally small, and over succeeding months market interest rates tended to rise. The yield on the Treasury' s 10-year note, for example, which had been 5.63 percent on January 30, and which closed at 5.60 percent on January 31, st...

When children ask, "What is it?" what do they want to know about artifacts?

When children ask, "What is it?" are they seeking information about what something is called or what kind of thing it is? To find out, we gave 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds (32 at each age) the opportunity to inquire about unfamiliar artifacts. An ambiguous question was answered with a name or with functional information, depending on the group to which the children were assigned. Children were incli...

"So, Tell Me What Users Want, What They Really, Really Want!"

Equating users' true needs and desires with behavioural measures of 'engagement' is problematic. However, good metrics of 'true preferences' are difficult to define, as cognitive biases make people's preferences change with context and exhibit inconsistencies over time. Yet, HCI research often glosses over the philosophical and theoretical depth of what it means to infer what users really want....

Infants ask for help when they know they don't know.

Uncertainty monitoring is a core property of metacognition, allowing individuals to adapt their decision-making strategies depending on the state of their knowledge. Although it has been argued that other animals share these metacognitive abilities, only humans seem to possess the ability to explicitly communicate their own uncertainty to others. It remains unknown whether this capacity is pres...

What information do patients need about medicines? Ask the patients--they may want to know more than you think.