Cognitive science for web usage analysis

Abstract

Web usage mining is the process of extracting patterns from web user's preferences and browsing behavior. Furthermore, the web user behavior refers to the user's activities in a web site. Cognitive science is a multi-disciplinary approach used for the understanding of human behavior, whose aims is to develop models of information processing in the real brain. Therefore, cognitive sciences can have direct application to web usage mining. In this chapter, some state-of-the-art psychology theories are presented in the context of web usage analysis. In spite of the complexity of neural processes in the brain, stochastic models based on diffusion can be used to explain a decision-making process, and this has been experimentally tested. Diffusion models and theirs application to describe web usage are reviewed in this chapter. An example of application of cognitive science to web usage mining is also presented. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.