Facial expressions constitute a rich source of non-verbal cues in face-to-face communication. They provide interlocutors with resources to express and interpret verbal messages, which may affect their cognitive and emotional processing. Contrarily, computer-mediated communication (CMC), particularly text-based communication, is limited to the use of symbols to convey a message, where facial expressions cannot be transmitted naturally. In this scenario, people use emoticons as paralinguistic cues to convey emotional meaning. Research has shown that emoticons contribute to a greater social presence as a result of the enrichment of text-based communication channels. Additionally, emoticons constitute a valuable resource for language comprehension by providing expressivity to text messages. The latter findings have been supported by studies in neuroscience showing that particular brain regions involved in emotional processing are also activated when people are exposed to emoticons. To reach an integrated understanding of the influence of emoticons in human communication on both socio-cognitive and neural levels, we review the literature on emoticons in three different areas. First, we present relevant literature on emoticons in CMC. Second, we study the influence of emoticons in language comprehension. Finally, we show the incipient research in neuroscience on this topic. This mini review reveals that, while there are plenty of studies on the influence of emoticons in communication from a social psychology perspective, little is known about the neurocognitive basis of the effects of emoticons on communication dynamics.

Many theories and models exist for understanding and explaining information seeking processes (ISP) for individuals. Such is not the case for collaborative information seeking (CIS), despite its growing importance. In this paper we take Kuhlthau's ISP model, designed for individual information seeking, and map it to a CIS situation. We present a laboratory study with 84 participants in 42 pairs and demonstrate how their information seeking processes over two sessions can be mapped to various stages of the ISP model. In addition, we explore the affective dimension of information seeking as well as perceived relevance expressed by the participants through their interactions. We discuss similarities and disparities of ISP for individuals and collaborative information seeking. In particular, we show that there is a logical progression from uncertainty about the task to being satisfied about the collected information among the participants; and at the same time, there is a lack of clear segmentation between stages of formulating information need, exploring information, and collecting it. The latter can be attributed to exploratory search tasks and interactions among the collaborators.

In this demo we introduce Coagmento, a tool for supporting interactive information seeking process of teams in various collaborative scenarios. Coagmento has been used in several laboratory and field studies to understand issues related to collaborative information seeking (CIS) and deriving lessons and guidelines for providing suitable support for people working in collaboration for information‐intensive projects. From its initial design, Coagmento has evolved through the introduction of new features and the support for both web‐based as well as mobile systems. Using appropriate research methodologies, Coagmento has proven to be a useful tool for collecting behavioral data of users enabling researchers to better understand different dimensions of the collaborative process of teams as well as single users while searching information online.