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Abstract: This special issue discusses European research on instructional support to foster students’ ability to solve information-based problems. In this introduction, the concept of information problem solving (IPS) and research in this field of interest will be placed in the broader perspective, which is called information behavior. The focus of this special issue is an educational one and the papers all go into a specific kind of instructional support. The main research questions, findings and conclusions of the six contributions will be outlined. It is concluded that the most important directions for future research deal with how instructional support for different aspect of the process, like for instance how to regulated the process, best can be designed in order to make the instruction adaptive and fit to the learners needs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In this study we examined the influence of attitude strength on the processing and evaluation of sources and information on the Web. Seventy-nine German university students participated in an eye-tracking study in which they read information from eight pre-selected websites from different sources on the controversial topic of organic foods. Results showed that participants who felt strongly about the topic (i.e., those with strong prior attitude strength) scrutinized website logos of attitude-inconsistent websites shorter and judged the credibility of attitude-inconsistent websites lower. They also included more attitude-consistent information in an essay task than participants with weaker prior attitudes. Participants who felt less strongly about the topic (i.e., those with weaker prior attitudes) fixated longer on text from attitude-inconsistent websites than from attitude-consistent websites. By contrast, for participants with strong prior attitudes the time spent on the texts from attitude-consistent websites and attitude-inconsistent websites did not differ significantly. The results show that prior attitudes can bias evaluation and processing of information in different ways. Even though participants were not fully biased during initial information processing, they were so when evaluating the information and presenting it in an essay task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]