Children's use of the Yahooligans! Web search engine: II. Cognitive and physical behaviors on research tasks

This study reports the results of Part II of a research project that investigated the cognitive and physical behaviors of middle school students in using Yahooligans! Seventeen students in the seventh grade searched Yahooligans! to locate relevant information for an assigned research task. Sixty-nine percent partially succeeded, while 31% failed. Children had difficulty completing the task mainly because they lacked adequate level of research skills and approached the task by seeking specific answers. Children’s cognitive and physical behaviors varied by success levels. Similarities and differences in children’s cognitive and physical behaviors were found between the research task and the factbased task they performed in the previous study. The present study considers the impact of prior experience in using the Web, domain knowledge, topic knowledge, and reading ability on children’s success. It reports the overall patterns of children’s behaviors, including searching and browsing moves, backtracking and looping moves, and navigational styles, as well as the time taken to complete the research task. Children expressed their information needs and provided recommendations for improving the interface design of Yahooligans! Implications for formal Web training and system design improvements are discussed.