The aim of this workshop is to discuss how users search information and navigate on the Internet, how individual differences in cognitive factors and strategies developed cause variations in search and navigation performance as well as how to model these individual differences in cognitive factors in order to build support mechanisms and tools. A number of cognitive processes are involved in the process of interacting with a search engine and websites: memory, attention, comprehension, problem solving, reasoning and decision making. Several cognitive factors such as aging-related cognitive abilities, domain knowledge, internet experience, etc. in turn influence either positively or negatively the above cognitive processes. For example, older adults are known to be less efficient than younger adults in finding information on the Internet due to the natural decline in their motor skills and fluid intelligence involving processing speed, cognitive flexibility or ability to switch processing strategies, attentional control and visuospatial span. Similarly, novices with little experience of the Internet are known to follow less efficient strategies compared to experts. Traditional search engines and information retrieval systems in general, however, focus largely on retrieving the most relevant results given a query and ignore all the variations caused by the cognitive factors. 

Cognitive models, on the other hand, take into account all the cognitive processes involved in an information search task and the cognitive factors that influence those cognitive processes to predict information search performance in a precise and automated way. They are based on well-tested theories of cognitive psychology and cognitive science on information search and navigation and are useful in building theory-based support mechanisms or interventions for those in need. 

The purpose of this workshop is therefore to bring together researchers from various disciplines such as cognitive psychology, computing science, human factors, human-computer interaction and information science to study and understand thoroughly the processes governing user interactions with the Internet. We solicit papers that examine search and navigation processes of participants while looking for information on the Internet and the relationship between various cognitive factors that affect those processes.