Argumentation Schemes for Events Suggestion in an e-Health Platform

In this work, we propose the introduction of persuasion techniques that guide the users into interacting with the Ambient Assisted Living framework iGenda. It is a cognitive assistant that manages active daily living activities, monitors user's health condition, and creates a social network between users via mobile devices. The objective is to be inserted in a healthcare environment and to provide features like adaptive interfaces, user profiling and machine learning processes that enhance the usage experience. The inclusion of a persuasive architecture (based on argumentation schemes) enables the system to provide recommendations to the users that fit their profile and interests, thus increases the chance of a positive interaction.A. Costa thanks the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) the Post-Doc scholarship with the Ref. SFRH/BPD/102696/2014. This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013. It was also supported by the by the projects TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and TIN2014-55206-R of the Spanish government and by the grant program for the recruitment of doctors for the Spanish system of science and technology (PAID-10-14) of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Intentional dialogues in multi-agent systems based on ontologies and argumentation

Some areas of application, for example, healthcare, are known to resist the replacement of human operators by fully autonomous systems. It is typically not transparent to users how artificial intelligence systems make decisions or obtain information, making it difficult for users to trust them. To address this issue, we investigate how argumentation theory and ontology techniques can be used together with reasoning about intentions to build complex natural language dialogues to support human decision-making. Based on such an investigation, we propose MAIDS, a framework for developing multi-agent intentional dialogue systems, which can be used in different domains. Our framework is modular so that it can be used in its entirety or just the modules that fulfil the requirements of each system to be developed. Our work also includes the formalisation of a novel dialogue-subdialogue structure with which we can address ontological or theory-of-mind issues and later return to the main subject. As a case study, we have developed a multi-agent system using the MAIDS framework to support healthcare professionals in making decisions on hospital bed allocations. Furthermore, we evaluated this multi-agent system with domain experts using real data from a hospital. The specialists who evaluated our system strongly agree or agree that the dialogues in which they participated fulfil Cohen’s desiderata for task-oriented dialogue systems. Our agents have the ability to explain to the user how they arrived at certain conclusions. Moreover, they have semantic representations as well as representations of the mental state of the dialogue participants, allowing the formulation of coherent justifications expressed in natural language, therefore, easy for human participants to understand. This indicates the potential of the framework introduced in this thesis for the practical development of explainable intelligent systems as well as systems supporting hybrid intelligence

What Do We Know About the World? Rhetorical and Argumentative Perspectives

his book consists of selected papers delivered at “First International Conference on Rhetoric in Croatia: the Days of Ivo Škarić” in May, 2012, and subsequently revised for publication. Through a variety of different routes, the papers explore the role of rhetoric and argumentation in various types of public discourse and present interdisciplinary work connecting linguists, phoneticians, philosophers, law experts and communication scientists in the common ground of rhetoric and argumentation

Dialogical functions of metaphors in medical interactions

This paper proposes a method for analyzing the dialogical functions of metaphors in communicative interactions, and more specifically in the context of medical interviews. The dialogical goals proposed and pursued by the interlocutors are coded using a coding scheme that captures seven mutually exclusive categories of dialogical moves. The functions of the moves, including metaphors, can be identified and correlated with other variables relevant to the type of communication under analysis. The coding scheme is used to analyze a corpus of 39 interactions between healthcare providers and patients affected by Type 2 diabetes. The exploratory quantitative analysis, for the purpose of determining the different distributions of metaphor uses between patients and providers, is combined with qualitative analysis in which the thematic areas of the metaphors are considered. The findings show how patients and providers use metaphors for pursuing different dialogical goals and meeting distinct communicative needs

An Intelligent Coaching Prototype for Elderly Care

The world ageing problem is prompting new sustainable ways to support elderly people. As such, it is important to promote personalized and intelligent ways to assure the active and healthy ageing of the population. Technological breakthroughs have led to the development of personalized healthcare systems, capable of monitoring and providing feedback on different aspects that can improve the health of the elderly person. Furthermore, defining motivational strategies to persuade the elderly person to be healthier and stay connected to such systems is also fundamental. In this work, a coaching system is presented, especially designed to support elderly people and motivate them to pursue healthier ways of living. To do this, a coaching application is developed using both a cognitive virtual assistant to directly interact with the elderly person and provide feedback on his/her current health condition, and several gamification techniques to motivate the elderly person to stay engaged with the application. Additionally, a set of simulations were performed to validate the proposed system in terms of the support and feedback provided to the user according to his progress, and through interactions with the cognitive assistant.The work presented in this paper has been developed under the EUREKA—ITEA3 Project PHE (PHE-16040), and by National Funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) under the under the project UIDP/00760/2020 and by NORTE-01-0247-FEDER-033275 (AIRDOC—“Aplicação móvel Inteligente para suporte individualizado e monitorização da função e sons Respiratórios de Doentes Obstrutivos Crónicos ”) by NORTE 2020 (Programa Operacional Regional do Norte).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Towards an authentic argumentation literacy test

A central goal of education is to improve argumentation literacy. How do we know how well this goal is achieved? Can we measure argumentation literacy? The present study is a preliminary step towards measuring the efficacy of education with regards to argumentation literacy. Tests currently in use to determine critical thinking skills are often similar to IQ-tests in that they predominantly measure logical and mathematical abilities. Thus, they may not measure the various other skills required in understanding authentic argumentation. To identify the elements of argumentation literacy, this exploratory study begins by surveying introductory textbooks within argumentation theory, critical thinking, and rhetoric. Eight main abilities have been identified. Then, the study outlines an Argumentation Literacy Test that would comprise these abilities suggested by the literature. Finally, the study presents results from a pilot of a version of such a test and discusses needs for further development

Implicit dialogical premises, explanation as argument: a corpus-based reconstruction

This paper focuses on an explanation in a newspaper article: why new European Union citizens will come to the UK from Eastern Europe (e.g., because of available jobs). Using a corpus-based method of analysis, I show how regular target readers have been positioned to generate premises in dialogue with the explanation propositions, and thus into an understanding of the explanation as an argument, one which contains a biased conclusion not apparent in the text. Employing this method, and in particular ‘corpus comparative statistical keywords’, I show how two issues can be freshly looked at: implicit premise recovery; the argument/explanation distinction