About this Research Topic

Background

The last decade witnessed rapid social and technological changes that increased individual access to information. This, on the one hand, granted individuals the opportunity to acquire information efficiently, and, on the other hand, burdened individuals with the responsibility of establishing whether this information is truthful, reliable, and relevant to their goals. Navigating dynamic information landscapes has become a quotidian aspect of individual lives in information societies, but are individuals equipped with sufficient information-processing skills in education? The emergence of fake news, populist seduction of voters, and the antivaccination backlash in the last years would suggest otherwise. While information truthfulness and reliability have been increasingly discussed in this context, whether education supports individuals in determining, evaluating, and acting upon the goal relevance of available information has remained somewhat overlooked. Establishing that information is accurate and comes from a trustworthy source cannot reliably guide behavior, if acquired information is irrelevant to the individual’s goal.

Relevance is an intuitive yet elusive feature of information. It changes over time, in relation to previous decision-making, and in response to the internal states and external circumstances. Whether information is relevant for individual goals is often judged intuitively, without explicit reflection, but how individuals determine, apply, and evaluate information relevance remains understudied in the educational context across the lifespan. Despite recent advances in cognition and aging on the one hand and a longstanding interest in the inhibition of irrelevant information in students, few efforts have been made to tie this body of research with the information-processing demands on individuals in current information societies. To facilitate the connection between the existing body of research, recent developments, and educational practice, this Research Topic will encourage experts in the relevant fields to reflect on the current social and technological developments in their contributions.

This Research Topic welcomes rigorous, cutting-edge contributions in psychology, education, language, neuroscience, and digital humanities that forge a connection between research on goal-oriented use of information and educational practice across the lifespan. We are interested in contributions that discuss either or all of the following themes: (1) how goal relevance of information is determined by the learner, (2) how proficiency in relevance/irrelevance judgments develops and changes over the lifespan, (3) how proficiency in relevance/irrelevance judgments may be supported through teaching practices. The link between the specific topic, the broader context of information societies, and educational practice must be explicit in each contribution. Original research, as well as reviews and theoretical articles, are equally encouraged.

Keywords: learning, memory, relevance, flexibility, transfer, cognition, cognitive development

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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