Psychological tools for knowledge acquisition

Knowledge acquisition is said to be the biggest bottleneck in the development of expert systems. The problem is getting the knowledge out of the expert's head and into a computer. In cognitive psychology, characterizing metal structures and why experts are good at what they do is an important research area. Is there some way that the tools that psychologists have developed to uncover mental structure can be used to benefit knowledge engineers? We think that the way to find out is to browse through the psychologist's toolbox to see what there is in it that might be of use to knowledge engineers. Expert system developers have relied on two standard methods for extracting knowledge from the expert: (1) the knowledge engineer engages in an intense bout of interviews with the expert or experts, or (2) the knowledge engineer becomes an expert himself, relying on introspection to uncover the basis of his own expertise. Unfortunately, these techniques have the difficulty that often the expert himself isn't consciously aware of the basis of his expertise. If the expert himself isn't conscious of how he solves problems, introspection is useless. Cognitive psychology has faced similar problems for many years and has developed exploratory methods that can be used to discover cognitive structure from simple data

Extracting expertise from experts: Methods for knowledge acquisition

Knowledge acquisition is the biggest bottleneck in the development of expert systems. Fortunately, the process of translating expert knowledge to a form suitable for expert system development can benefit from methods developed by cognitive science to reveal human knowledge structures. There are two classes of these investigative methods, direct and indirect. We provide reviews, criteria for use, and literature sources for all principal methods. Direct methods discussed are: interviews, questionnaires, observation of task performance, protocol analysis, interruption analysis, closed curves, and inferential flow analysis. Indirect methods include: multidimensional scaling, hierarchical clustering, general weighted networks, ordered trees, and repertory grid analysis.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73498/1/j.1468-0394.1987.tb00139.x.pd

Rimokatoliška cerkev in mediji v Sloveniji po letu 1990

Because office automation has not fulfilled its promise of making work more productive and satisfying, researchers have developed techniques for specifying better requirements for office automation and support. Four such office analysis techniques have been publicly proposed, differing in how much of the complete analysis-to-prescription cycle they cover, what aspects they analyze, and how they bound the "office." Review of these analysis processes points to three key issues: 1. Office analysis is weak on prescribing specific support/automation products; 2. we do not know how to evaluate different analysis techniques; and 3. we have not yet specified the criteria by which we would decide which technique is good. In answer to these issues, we suggest that extensions of some promising schemes for prescribing specific products be explored; that techniques be compared using an efficient "transcript experiment" approach; and that the criteria for acceptability for an analysis method be that its descriptions be reliable and valid, and that its prescriptions be valuable to the workers in the reorganized, computer-supported office.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Japonska družba danes

Značilnosti homogenosti, egalitarnosti, skupinske orientiranosti in kolektivnih vrednot japonske družbe so močne in prevladujoče. Obstajajo pa številne subkulture, ki so vezane na rasno delitev japonske družbe, pa tudi na spol, starost, regijo, poklic itd. Ti tudi določajo dostop do številnih virov, vključno z ekonomskimi privilegiji, politično močjo, družbenim ugledom, iformacijami, znanjem. V tem smislu je na Japonsko treba gledati kot na družbo več kultur pa tudi več slojev. Japonska ima vrsto manjšin, ki so predmet diskriminacijek in predsodkov, izvirajočih iz kulturno določenih etničnih mitov, iluzij in neresnic. Povprečen japonec je ženskega spola (51 %, zaposlen v majhnih podjetjih (88%), brez univerzitetne izobrazbe (88%), ni član sindikata (76%). Nezaposlenih je malo (3,2%), vendar je kriterij zaposlenosti celo enourno delo na mesec! Konvergentni procesi v Japonski družbi: 1. staranje japonske družbe, 2. družina in sorodstvene vezi so se preobrazile v smeri, kot je značilno za Evropo in ZDA, 3. spremembe v managementu, izginja princip senjoritete, 4. vrednostni sistem se vse bolj nagiba k individualnostiIt is actually quite difficult to present a particular state or its content - society. There is a lot of jeopardy and possible mistakes: some characteristics may be chosen as key indicators, but in fact they are notsome which are important may not be stressed enoughothers may be overlooked,although they ought to be at least pointed out, being connected with other key characteristics etc. One of the possible approaches is to imagine a particular country as an average citizen with all characteristics most frequently present. Every state or its society is something special, since it is impossible to find two countries at the same level of development according to all their characteristics (history, religion, climate, economical-developmental indicator, socio-cultural characteristics etc.). However, Japan is a unique country also according to inhabitants\u27 belief that they are something special. Doubtless, the characteristics of homogeneity, egalitarianism, orientation toward group and collective values are strong and prevailing. However, one cannot forget about several subcultures - if understood as sets of values, expectations and the ways of life lived and shared by a certain part of population. They are connected with racial division of Japanese society, and also with sex, age, religion, vocation etc. This is connected with differences in limited access to numerous resources, including economic privileges, political power, social reputation, information, knowledge. In this context Japanese society has to be seen as a society of several cultures and strata. Although Japan is racially and nationally homogeneous, it has series of minorities, which are by the rule an object of discrimination and prejudices, rising from a culturally defined ethnical myths, illusions, falseness