E. Brent et al., DISAMBIGUATING VERBAL COMMENTS IN SOCIAL-INTERACTION - A COMPUTER-MODEL OF MEANING, The Journal of mathematical sociology, 20(2-3), 1995, pp. 109-125
Citations number
38
Categorie Soggetti
Sociology,"Social Sciences, Mathematical Methods","Mathematical, Methods, Social Sciences
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.