As Artificial Intelligence (AI) conversational agents become widespread, people are increasingly using them for health information seeking. The use of off-the-shelf conversational agents for health information seeking could place high metacognitive demands (the need for extensive monitoring and control of one's own thought process) on individuals, which could compromise their experience of seeking health information. However, currently, the specific demands that arise while using conversational agents for health information seeking, and the strategies people use to cope with those demands, remain unknown. To address these gaps, we conducted a think-aloud study with 15 participants as they sought health information using our off-the-shelf AI conversational agent. We identified the metacognitive demands such systems impose, the strategies people adopt in response, and propose considerations for designing beyond off-the-shelf interfaces to reduce these demands and support better user experiences and affordances in health information seeking.

翻译：随着人工智能对话代理的广泛普及，人们越来越多地将其用于健康信息查询。使用现成的对话代理获取健康信息可能会对个体产生较高的元认知需求（即需要对自身思维过程进行广泛监控与调节），这可能损害其健康信息查询体验。然而，目前对于使用对话代理进行健康信息查询时产生的具体需求，以及人们应对这些需求的策略，仍缺乏深入研究。为填补这些空白，我们开展了一项有声思维研究，邀请15名参与者使用我们开发的现成AI对话代理进行健康信息查询。我们识别了此类系统带来的元认知需求，分析了人们采取的应对策略，并提出了超越现成界面的设计考量，以降低这些需求并支持更优的健康信息查询用户体验与功能支持。