DISAMBIGUATING VERBAL COMMENTS IN SOCIAL-INTERACTION - A COMPUTER-MODEL OF MEANING

This paper describes a computer program for disambiguating the meaning of verbal acts in social interaction. The program was implemented usi ng artificial intelligence techniques, representing utterances by fram es, designing separate agents employing procedural rules to infer valu es of each coding dimension, and sharing information through a blackbo ard. The computer algorithms are discussed and illustrated with exampl es, then results of an empirical test of the program are reported. A t raining-set of verbal interactions among health care practitioners and patients was examined to build the program, with an independent test- set of data used to assess program performance. On a practical level, this program offers a promising approach for computer-assisted or even automatic coding of interaction processes, reducing coding costs and improving reliability and validity. On a theoretical level, these algo rithms offer a model of how individuals disambiguate the meaning of ve rbal comments in social interaction, providing substantive insights in to the mechanisms of social interaction.