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For over a year, the pandemic has forced youth to alter their routines and rely almost exclusively on technology to learn, play and connect with family and friends. Although some alterations in youth's routine seem to be temporary, some adaptations and appropriations resulting from interactions with technology will likely be forever altered. As this scenario develops, we must reflect on how these permanent changes will affect our approaches and inquiries on youth information interaction. This 90‐minute panel will convene scholars and members of the ASIS&T community interested in discussing the present and the future of digital youth research. Panelists will mediate focused conversations with participants to generate a collective account of experiences and reflections based on challenges and research plans for after the pandemic. As the implications of a global pandemic are unfolding, youth information interaction research will be critical to inform policies and programs in education and reduce digital divides.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the readability and level of word complexity of search engine results pages (SERPs) snippets and associated web pages between Google and Bing. Design/methodology/approach The authors employed the Readability Test Tool to analyze the readability and word complexity of 3,000 SERPs snippets and 3,000 associated pages in Google and Bing retrieved on 150 search queries issued by middle school children. Findings A significant difference was found in the readability of SERPs snippets and associated web pages between Google and Bing. A significant difference was also observed in the number of complex words in snippets between the two engines but not in associated web pages. At the engine level, the readability of Google and Bing snippets was significantly higher than associated web pages. The readability of Google SERPs snippets was at a much higher level than those of Bing. The readability of snippets in both engines mismatched with the reading comprehension of children in grades 6–8. Research limitations/implications The data corpus may be small. Analysis relied on quantitative measures. Practical implications Practitioners and other mediators should mitigate the readability issue in SERPs snippets. Researchers should consider text readability and word complexity simultaneously with other factors to obtain the nuanced understanding of young users’ web information behaviors. Additional theoretical and methodological implications are discussed. Originality/value This study measured the readability and the level of word complexity embedded in SERPs snippets and compared them to respective web pages in Google and Bing. Findings provide further evidence of the readability issue of SERPs snippets and the need to solve this issue through system design improvements.

This study examined international students’ acquisition of library research skills in relation to their English language proficiency. The experimental study involved 13 students who were studying English at the Florida State University Center for Intensive English Studies (FSU-CIES) during the 1987 Spring semester. Results of the Pearson Product Moment Test showed a moderate correlation (r = .43) between the students’ exit TOEFL scores and the posttest library skills scores. Other findings were: (1) The students mastered 80% of the material taught as measured by Shannon Entropy; (2) Lack of command of the English language, lack of selfsufficiency, and absence of the conceptual awareness of library research were major obstacles to comprehension of the material.

We explored teens’ (aged 15–17) conceptual understanding of search engines (SEs), emphasizing search engine result pages (SERPs). In an online survey, we asked teens to articulate how a search engine (SE) finds, generates summaries of, and ranks search results; identify the structural components of search results; comment on learning in school about SEs; as well as provide suggestions for improving SEs. Of one-hundred and ten teens, twenty-two completed the survey. Analyses revealed that teens’ conceptual understanding of SERPs is more perceptual than conceptual and guided by incidental and experiential learnings rather than systematic instruction in school. We found a gap between teens’ understanding of the design and representation of the structural components of search results and Google designers’ conceptual model (interface design) of these components, suggesting the need for design that is more transparent and with better affordances and signifiers. Teens suggested three categories of design improvements in Google (SERPs, Search and Retrieval, and Privacy) in support of enhancing their experiences. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

In this paper, the robot-assisted Reminiscence Therapy (RT) is studied as a psychosocial intervention to persons with dementia (PwDs). We aim at a conversation strategy for the robot by reinforcement learning to stimulate the PwD to talk. Specifically, to characterize the stochastic reactions of a PwD to the robot’s actions, a simulation model of a PwD is developed which features the transition probabilities among different PwD states consisting of the response relevance, emotion levels and confusion conditions. A Q-learning (QL) algorithm is then designed to achieve the best conversation strategy for the robot. The objective is to stimulate the PwD to talk as much as possible while keeping the PwD’s states as positive as possible. In certain conditions, the achieved strategy gives the PwD choices to continue or change the topic, or stop the conversation, so that the PwD has a sense of control to mitigate the conversation stress. To achieve this, the standard QL algorithm is revised to deliberately integrate the impact of PwD’s choices into the Q-value updates. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate the learning convergence and validate the efficacy of the achieved strategy. Tests show that the strategy is capable to duly adjust the difficulty level of prompt according to the PwD’s states, take actions (e.g., repeat or explain the prompt, or comfort) to help the PwD out of bad states, and allow the PwD to control the conversation tendency when bad states continue.