Abstract: In e-government context, trust plays a vital role in helping citizens overcome perceive... more Abstract: In e-government context, trust plays a vital role in helping citizens overcome perceived risks. Trust makes citizens comfortable sharing personal information, make online government transaction, and acting on e-Government advices. Thus, trust is a significant notion that ...
Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 2008
In attempting to give students the opportunity to work on group projects with other students, yet... more In attempting to give students the opportunity to work on group projects with other students, yet ensuring students receive the marks that they each deserve, a management strategy for dealing with group work initially proposed by Ford and Morice (2003) was implemented. The present paper discusses the implementation of this strategy with its positive and negative outcomes. While good students were, not surprisingly, happy to receive the marks they deserved and while some of the benefits of group work were gained, there were problems that led to resentment and hostility from some students. Suggestions for improving the strategy and an initial attempt to implement the revised strategy are also discussed.
Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 2004
In the choice of a pedagogy for a new unit on IT project management, an innovative single case st... more In the choice of a pedagogy for a new unit on IT project management, an innovative single case study approach was chosen, in the hope of providing a 'virtual environment' in which students could embed themselves. By providing a single, rich, descriptive project environment for students, it was hoped that they would become deeply involved in the case and thus adopt a deeper approach to learning and subsequently a greater understanding of the theoretical constructs covered in the unit. The pedagogy chosen is being evaluated and where necessary revised in what can be described as an action learning approach. Following an initial evaluation of the learning approaches adopted by students, revisions were made to the pedagogy. This paper discusses the findings from two subsequent offerings of the unit.
Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 2007
In tertiary institutions in Australia, and no doubt elsewhere, there is increasing pressure for a... more In tertiary institutions in Australia, and no doubt elsewhere, there is increasing pressure for accountability. No longer are academics assumed a priori to be responsible and capable of self management in teaching and assessing the subjects they run. Procedures are being dictated more from the 'top down'. Although academics may not always appreciate 'top down' policies on teaching and learning, they should at least be open to the possibility that the policies may indeed have merit. On the other hand, academics should never be expected to blindly accept policies dictated from elsewhere. Responsible academics generally also need to evaluate for themselves the validity and legitimacy of externally introduced new policies and procedures. At one Australian tertiary institution, the Academic Board recently endorsed a new assessment policy, to implement criterion referenced assessment (CRA) throughout the university. This new policy is being promoted by the university's teaching and learning support services and is to be implemented gradually throughout the university. As stated in the university's manual of policies and procedures (MOPP) the 'fundamental approach' to the assessment of students was to be one based on 'criterion referencing'. Such Assessment was to be free of any notion of awarding grades dependent on a bell curve, and the criteria against which a student's work was to be assessed would have to be communicated in a detailed and clear way in advance of the actual assessment. Thus, for each piece of assessment, criteria must be given to students, with performance standards for each criteria detailing clearly what standard must be reached on each criterion to achieve a certain result. It is stated in the MOPP that CRA will give the assessment process 'a great deal of objectivity' and will contribute to the 'reliability and validity of the assessment task'. Moreover, it is stated that high, but attainable, standards will 'motivate students and focus their energy on learning rather than on competition with peers'. The teaching team of the final year Information Technology Project Management subject had a strong commitment to continuous improvement processes in the presentation and running of the subject. Given that the university had en-Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee.
Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 2006
Although much literature exists on desired qualities of team leaders of IT projects and even desi... more Although much literature exists on desired qualities of team leaders of IT projects and even desired components of the team, there is a paucity of literature on the desired personal qualities of individuals working within team settings. This research set out to empirically investigate the personal qualities which students believe would be desirable in IT project team members. An initial attempt to create a taxonomy of desired personal qualities was made using feedback from two groups of students; undergraduate and graduate students who had completed an IT project management (ITPM) course. The students were asked, as part of a major group assignment, to give the personal qualities that they would want in project team members if they were a project manager. This topic had not been explicitly covered in their course, though there had been an underlying emphasis on the importance of 'soft skills'. From reading the students' responses, a taxonomy that varied along two main dimensions was developed; first, whether the named quality related specifically to the work environment or whether the quality was one that would be relevant to many aspects of life, and second, whether or not the quality relied on interaction with others and thus whether it was better described as personal or interpersonal. Further, a division was made concerning whether the quality was more a characteristic of a person, called a trait here, or a skill. After the initial taxonomy was developed, it was applied to a different set of students. This new group of students had recently completed a third level, year long, group IT project for external clients. These students, who were from a different university from the first two groups of students, were asked, via email, to give the personal qualities they would want in project team members. From reading the responses, it was apparent that the taxonomy needed to be extended by adding a new dimension, 'values', which would include qualities like honest and hard-working. This new dimension thus allowed a distinction to be made between qualities that reflected a person's values and those that did not, like being cooperative or fun-loving. 'real world' experiences of team work, students may be confronted to an unrealistic degree with poor work ethics of fellow team members, thus leading to a perspective where work values are paramount. Interestingly, while the ITPM course had placed an emphasis on 'soft skills', the undergraduate ITPM students gave less emphasis to interpersonal qualities than graduate students. It may be that the work experience of graduate students has allowed them to see the importance of interpersonal skills. Though initially not concerned with the effects of different methods of educating future IT Project members, our findings give some insight into such educational issues.
Even though today's corporations recognize that they need to understand modern project management... more Even though today's corporations recognize that they need to understand modern project management techniques (Schwalbe, 2002, p2), many researchers continue to provide evidence of poor IT project success. With Kotnour, (2000) finding that project performance is positively associated with project knowledge, a better understanding of how to effectively manage knowledge in IT projects should have considerable practical significance for increasing the chances of project success. Using a combined qualitative/quantitative method of data collection in multiple case studies spanning four continents, and comprising a variety of organizational types, the focus of this current research centered on the question of why individuals working within IT project teams might be motivated towards, or inhibited from, sharing their knowledge and experience in their activities, procedures, and processes. The research concluded with the development of a new theoretical model of knowledge sharing behavior, 'The Alignment Model of Motivational Focus'. This model suggests that an individual's propensity to share knowledge and experience is a function of perceived personal benefits and costs associated with the activity, balanced against the individual's alignment to a group of 'institutional' factors. These factors are identified as alignments to the project team, to the organization, and dependent on the circumstances, to either the professional discipline or community of practice, to which the individual belongs.
Group assignments are becoming increasingly popular in education, including Information Technolog... more Group assignments are becoming increasingly popular in education, including Information Technology education. This paper explores problems with the use of group assignments and offers a new strategy designed to keep the good features of group assignments while removing the negative. Many students in Information Technology believe they should have group assignments because they will be working in groups in industry. Staff sometimes justify the use of group assignments as preparing students for team work in industry. However, we suggest that many problems with group assignments can be overcome by making group assignments more closely replicate conditions in industry. We propose a three-phase strategy using management techniques on a small scale.
Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 2010
With universities having difficulty attracting students to study information technology (IT), the... more With universities having difficulty attracting students to study information technology (IT), the scores needed for entry into IT degrees have dropped markedly. IT schools are thus having to cope by adjusting their introductory courses to ensure that students will still learn what is expected but without negatively impacting on pass rates. This paper considers short objective tests, designed by other researchers, to examine whether students who have passed an introductory course have achieved an understanding of fundamental concepts in programming. The Dehnadi test, which was originally designed to be taken before a programming course to predict who would be successful, proved to be useful in showing that many students who had passed an introductory programming course had little or no understanding of fundamental concepts. The test was useful if the number of correct responses was considered. Implications of students passing an introductory course but being unable to respond correctly on a multiple choice test of the most fundamental concepts of programming are considered.
Two studies were conducted to examine the expectations computing students had held before they co... more Two studies were conducted to examine the expectations computing students had held before they commenced their degree. We examined whether reality matched their expectations, how and whether they had tried to obtain information before enrolling in their degree, and how they were coping with their studies. Results showed that, for many students, reality did not match their expectations even when they had obtained information about their proposed degree. This often led to resentment and frustration. Solutions to this complex problem are proposed.
In this paper, the theory of syllogistic reasoning proposed by Johnson-Laird (1983, 1986; Johnson... more In this paper, the theory of syllogistic reasoning proposed by Johnson-Laird (1983, 1986; Johnson-Laird & Bara, 1984; Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991) is shown to be inadequate and an alternative theory is put forward. Protocols of people attempting to solve syllogistic problems and explaining to another person how they reached their conclusions were obtained. Two main groups of subjects were identified. One group represented the relationship between classes in a spatial manner that was supplemented by a verbal representation. The other group used a primarily verbal representation. A detailed theory of the processes for both groups is given.
In many situations, one can choose between several syntactic options that are equally grammatical... more In many situations, one can choose between several syntactic options that are equally grammatical, but that may differ in their acceptability in the given context. An example 89
There is much interest in using large corpora to explore predictors of the probability of higher ... more There is much interest in using large corpora to explore predictors of the probability of higher level linguistic structures, but suitable corpora are not available for all languages and their varieties. We explore a task that uses discourse contexts from an existing corpus as prompts for sentence completion to investigate the usefulness of the method for generating data as a proxy for unavailable corpus data. Mini databases of dative and genitive structures were obtained with the method using American and Australian participants. It is shown that the databases are indeed a good proxy for corpus data.
... definiteness of theme, definite, definite. animacy of recipient, animate, animate. ... The le... more ... definiteness of theme, definite, definite. animacy of recipient, animate, animate. ... The length oftheme and definiteness of theme effects are both in line with the corpus model. A prepositional dative is less favored where the theme is indefinite and as theme length increases. ...
Mismatches between grammaticality judgments of linguists and actual usage are surprisingly common... more Mismatches between grammaticality judgments of linguists and actual usage are surprisingly common, particularly where linguists invoke subtle contrasts such as between different types of dative transfer verbs or between different types of dative communication verbs. For example, as Levin's (1993) compendium of verb classes in the linguistic literature shows, linguists have judged verbs of manner of communication like mutter or whisper as ungrammatical in the double object form in contrast to the prepositional alternative (*whisper John the answer vs. whisper the answer to John), while they have judged verbs of communication by instrument like phone or text grammatical in each of the alternative structures (phone John the answer, phone the answer to John). Similarly, linguists have
In this paper, a formal system of nonmonotonic reasoning is developed, which takes as its inspira... more In this paper, a formal system of nonmonotonic reasoning is developed, which takes as its inspiration the manner in which some people make logically justifiable conclusions about nonmonotonic reasoning problems. The people, when asked about individuals, compare the logical strength of the arguments relating any sets to which the individual belongs, to other sets. A three-tiered system of rules including rules of System P as well as Transitivity and Monotonicity is developed. The system, known as System LS for logical strength, deals with three levels of non-strict relationships: α | ∼1 β α are normally β (more than half of the α are β); α | ∼2 β some α are β; α | ∼3 β a relationship, α | ∼3 β, has been derived but it is possible that no α are β. The rules of the system give the logical consequences of the relationships between the sets in the premises at the three levels. Several problems, including some well-known benchmark problems, are discussed, illustrating the inferences that System LS derives.
Influencing nonmonotonic reasoning by modifier strength manipulation Kristien Dieussaert (kristie... more Influencing nonmonotonic reasoning by modifier strength manipulation Kristien Dieussaert ([email protected]) Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, 102 Tiensestraat, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium Marilyn Ford ([email protected]) School of Computing and Information Technology, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia, 4111 Leon Horsten ([email protected]) Department of Philosophy, University of Leuven, 2 Kardinaal Mercierplein, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium default reasoning. Since the long-term goal of most AI researchers is to simulate human reasoning, and since we do not have an objective theory of what rational default reasoning is, Pelletier and Elio (1997) argue that a psychologistic view of default reasoning should be adopted. Thus, the data that any default system should cover should be determined by the practices of ordinary people. We agree with the importance of investigating human reasoning by controlled experimental research t...
Probabilistic models of corpus data can be used to predict higher-level grammatical choices and t... more Probabilistic models of corpus data can be used to predict higher-level grammatical choices and to quantify changes in such choices across different speaker groups in geographic or social space and in historical time. The present study uses probabilistic models in a novel way, to measure and compare the syntactic predictive capacities of speakers of different varieties of the same language. The present study shows that speakers knowledge of probabilistic grammatical choices can vary across different varieties of the same language and can be detected psycholinguistically in the individual. Given evidence of probabilistic changes in the English dative alternation across varieties of English, we examined responses to the verb-argument dependencies in the English dative alternation by six different groups of American and Australian subjects in three parallel psycholinguistic experiments * We thank Gabriel Recchia, Nick Romero, and Richard Futrell for assistance with data collection.
People seem adept at drawing tentative conclusions when premises do not lead to a necessary concl... more People seem adept at drawing tentative conclusions when premises do not lead to a necessary conclusion. In contrast, the artificial nonmonotonic reasoning systems that have been developed are complex and do not function with ease. This apparent difference between human and artificial computational reasoning is sometimes considered puzzling and frustrating -if people can do it so easily, why can't we get computers to do it easily? The present paper explores the ways in which people attempt to solve nonmonotonic problems which contain conflict and shows that people do not in fact reason about these nonmonotonic problems so easily; they jump to conclusions easily, but they do not reason so well. However, some people do manage to sometimes reason quite well, in that their reasoning is based on ideas that are (classically) logically justifiable. This paper explores differences between these reasoners and others who cope less well. It also explores how the identification of the way in which these people reason can be used to inform artificial nonmonotonic reasoning systems. It is well known in the literature on human reasoning that people are not adept at deductive reasoning . It is often asserted that this stands in stark contrast to our everyday commonsense reasoning Pelletier & Elio, in press). In everyday reasoning, much of the information we deal with is uncertain and does not cover all cases and so the required reasoning often cannot be deductive. The reasoning is often nonmonotonic in that, unlike deductive reasoning, the number of conclusions drawn will not necessarily increase as the number of premises increases -as we get more information, some conclusions might need to be retracted (for overviews, see Ginsberg, 1987; Lukaszewicz, 1991;. Throughout the history of nonmonotonic reasoning in Artificial Intelligence (AI), it has been assumed that people, unlike artificial systems that have been developed, cope well with such reasoning . Psychologists seem to agree with the idea that people cope well:
Abstract: In e-government context, trust plays a vital role in helping citizens overcome perceive... more Abstract: In e-government context, trust plays a vital role in helping citizens overcome perceived risks. Trust makes citizens comfortable sharing personal information, make online government transaction, and acting on e-Government advices. Thus, trust is a significant notion that ...
Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 2008
In attempting to give students the opportunity to work on group projects with other students, yet... more In attempting to give students the opportunity to work on group projects with other students, yet ensuring students receive the marks that they each deserve, a management strategy for dealing with group work initially proposed by Ford and Morice (2003) was implemented. The present paper discusses the implementation of this strategy with its positive and negative outcomes. While good students were, not surprisingly, happy to receive the marks they deserved and while some of the benefits of group work were gained, there were problems that led to resentment and hostility from some students. Suggestions for improving the strategy and an initial attempt to implement the revised strategy are also discussed.
Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, 2004
In the choice of a pedagogy for a new unit on IT project management, an innovative single case st... more In the choice of a pedagogy for a new unit on IT project management, an innovative single case study approach was chosen, in the hope of providing a 'virtual environment' in which students could embed themselves. By providing a single, rich, descriptive project environment for students, it was hoped that they would become deeply involved in the case and thus adopt a deeper approach to learning and subsequently a greater understanding of the theoretical constructs covered in the unit. The pedagogy chosen is being evaluated and where necessary revised in what can be described as an action learning approach. Following an initial evaluation of the learning approaches adopted by students, revisions were made to the pedagogy. This paper discusses the findings from two subsequent offerings of the unit.
Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 2007
In tertiary institutions in Australia, and no doubt elsewhere, there is increasing pressure for a... more In tertiary institutions in Australia, and no doubt elsewhere, there is increasing pressure for accountability. No longer are academics assumed a priori to be responsible and capable of self management in teaching and assessing the subjects they run. Procedures are being dictated more from the 'top down'. Although academics may not always appreciate 'top down' policies on teaching and learning, they should at least be open to the possibility that the policies may indeed have merit. On the other hand, academics should never be expected to blindly accept policies dictated from elsewhere. Responsible academics generally also need to evaluate for themselves the validity and legitimacy of externally introduced new policies and procedures. At one Australian tertiary institution, the Academic Board recently endorsed a new assessment policy, to implement criterion referenced assessment (CRA) throughout the university. This new policy is being promoted by the university's teaching and learning support services and is to be implemented gradually throughout the university. As stated in the university's manual of policies and procedures (MOPP) the 'fundamental approach' to the assessment of students was to be one based on 'criterion referencing'. Such Assessment was to be free of any notion of awarding grades dependent on a bell curve, and the criteria against which a student's work was to be assessed would have to be communicated in a detailed and clear way in advance of the actual assessment. Thus, for each piece of assessment, criteria must be given to students, with performance standards for each criteria detailing clearly what standard must be reached on each criterion to achieve a certain result. It is stated in the MOPP that CRA will give the assessment process 'a great deal of objectivity' and will contribute to the 'reliability and validity of the assessment task'. Moreover, it is stated that high, but attainable, standards will 'motivate students and focus their energy on learning rather than on competition with peers'. The teaching team of the final year Information Technology Project Management subject had a strong commitment to continuous improvement processes in the presentation and running of the subject. Given that the university had en-Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee.
Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 2006
Although much literature exists on desired qualities of team leaders of IT projects and even desi... more Although much literature exists on desired qualities of team leaders of IT projects and even desired components of the team, there is a paucity of literature on the desired personal qualities of individuals working within team settings. This research set out to empirically investigate the personal qualities which students believe would be desirable in IT project team members. An initial attempt to create a taxonomy of desired personal qualities was made using feedback from two groups of students; undergraduate and graduate students who had completed an IT project management (ITPM) course. The students were asked, as part of a major group assignment, to give the personal qualities that they would want in project team members if they were a project manager. This topic had not been explicitly covered in their course, though there had been an underlying emphasis on the importance of 'soft skills'. From reading the students' responses, a taxonomy that varied along two main dimensions was developed; first, whether the named quality related specifically to the work environment or whether the quality was one that would be relevant to many aspects of life, and second, whether or not the quality relied on interaction with others and thus whether it was better described as personal or interpersonal. Further, a division was made concerning whether the quality was more a characteristic of a person, called a trait here, or a skill. After the initial taxonomy was developed, it was applied to a different set of students. This new group of students had recently completed a third level, year long, group IT project for external clients. These students, who were from a different university from the first two groups of students, were asked, via email, to give the personal qualities they would want in project team members. From reading the responses, it was apparent that the taxonomy needed to be extended by adding a new dimension, 'values', which would include qualities like honest and hard-working. This new dimension thus allowed a distinction to be made between qualities that reflected a person's values and those that did not, like being cooperative or fun-loving. 'real world' experiences of team work, students may be confronted to an unrealistic degree with poor work ethics of fellow team members, thus leading to a perspective where work values are paramount. Interestingly, while the ITPM course had placed an emphasis on 'soft skills', the undergraduate ITPM students gave less emphasis to interpersonal qualities than graduate students. It may be that the work experience of graduate students has allowed them to see the importance of interpersonal skills. Though initially not concerned with the effects of different methods of educating future IT Project members, our findings give some insight into such educational issues.
Even though today's corporations recognize that they need to understand modern project management... more Even though today's corporations recognize that they need to understand modern project management techniques (Schwalbe, 2002, p2), many researchers continue to provide evidence of poor IT project success. With Kotnour, (2000) finding that project performance is positively associated with project knowledge, a better understanding of how to effectively manage knowledge in IT projects should have considerable practical significance for increasing the chances of project success. Using a combined qualitative/quantitative method of data collection in multiple case studies spanning four continents, and comprising a variety of organizational types, the focus of this current research centered on the question of why individuals working within IT project teams might be motivated towards, or inhibited from, sharing their knowledge and experience in their activities, procedures, and processes. The research concluded with the development of a new theoretical model of knowledge sharing behavior, 'The Alignment Model of Motivational Focus'. This model suggests that an individual's propensity to share knowledge and experience is a function of perceived personal benefits and costs associated with the activity, balanced against the individual's alignment to a group of 'institutional' factors. These factors are identified as alignments to the project team, to the organization, and dependent on the circumstances, to either the professional discipline or community of practice, to which the individual belongs.
Group assignments are becoming increasingly popular in education, including Information Technolog... more Group assignments are becoming increasingly popular in education, including Information Technology education. This paper explores problems with the use of group assignments and offers a new strategy designed to keep the good features of group assignments while removing the negative. Many students in Information Technology believe they should have group assignments because they will be working in groups in industry. Staff sometimes justify the use of group assignments as preparing students for team work in industry. However, we suggest that many problems with group assignments can be overcome by making group assignments more closely replicate conditions in industry. We propose a three-phase strategy using management techniques on a small scale.
Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 2010
With universities having difficulty attracting students to study information technology (IT), the... more With universities having difficulty attracting students to study information technology (IT), the scores needed for entry into IT degrees have dropped markedly. IT schools are thus having to cope by adjusting their introductory courses to ensure that students will still learn what is expected but without negatively impacting on pass rates. This paper considers short objective tests, designed by other researchers, to examine whether students who have passed an introductory course have achieved an understanding of fundamental concepts in programming. The Dehnadi test, which was originally designed to be taken before a programming course to predict who would be successful, proved to be useful in showing that many students who had passed an introductory programming course had little or no understanding of fundamental concepts. The test was useful if the number of correct responses was considered. Implications of students passing an introductory course but being unable to respond correctly on a multiple choice test of the most fundamental concepts of programming are considered.
Two studies were conducted to examine the expectations computing students had held before they co... more Two studies were conducted to examine the expectations computing students had held before they commenced their degree. We examined whether reality matched their expectations, how and whether they had tried to obtain information before enrolling in their degree, and how they were coping with their studies. Results showed that, for many students, reality did not match their expectations even when they had obtained information about their proposed degree. This often led to resentment and frustration. Solutions to this complex problem are proposed.
In this paper, the theory of syllogistic reasoning proposed by Johnson-Laird (1983, 1986; Johnson... more In this paper, the theory of syllogistic reasoning proposed by Johnson-Laird (1983, 1986; Johnson-Laird & Bara, 1984; Johnson-Laird & Byrne, 1991) is shown to be inadequate and an alternative theory is put forward. Protocols of people attempting to solve syllogistic problems and explaining to another person how they reached their conclusions were obtained. Two main groups of subjects were identified. One group represented the relationship between classes in a spatial manner that was supplemented by a verbal representation. The other group used a primarily verbal representation. A detailed theory of the processes for both groups is given.
In many situations, one can choose between several syntactic options that are equally grammatical... more In many situations, one can choose between several syntactic options that are equally grammatical, but that may differ in their acceptability in the given context. An example 89
There is much interest in using large corpora to explore predictors of the probability of higher ... more There is much interest in using large corpora to explore predictors of the probability of higher level linguistic structures, but suitable corpora are not available for all languages and their varieties. We explore a task that uses discourse contexts from an existing corpus as prompts for sentence completion to investigate the usefulness of the method for generating data as a proxy for unavailable corpus data. Mini databases of dative and genitive structures were obtained with the method using American and Australian participants. It is shown that the databases are indeed a good proxy for corpus data.
... definiteness of theme, definite, definite. animacy of recipient, animate, animate. ... The le... more ... definiteness of theme, definite, definite. animacy of recipient, animate, animate. ... The length oftheme and definiteness of theme effects are both in line with the corpus model. A prepositional dative is less favored where the theme is indefinite and as theme length increases. ...
Mismatches between grammaticality judgments of linguists and actual usage are surprisingly common... more Mismatches between grammaticality judgments of linguists and actual usage are surprisingly common, particularly where linguists invoke subtle contrasts such as between different types of dative transfer verbs or between different types of dative communication verbs. For example, as Levin's (1993) compendium of verb classes in the linguistic literature shows, linguists have judged verbs of manner of communication like mutter or whisper as ungrammatical in the double object form in contrast to the prepositional alternative (*whisper John the answer vs. whisper the answer to John), while they have judged verbs of communication by instrument like phone or text grammatical in each of the alternative structures (phone John the answer, phone the answer to John). Similarly, linguists have
In this paper, a formal system of nonmonotonic reasoning is developed, which takes as its inspira... more In this paper, a formal system of nonmonotonic reasoning is developed, which takes as its inspiration the manner in which some people make logically justifiable conclusions about nonmonotonic reasoning problems. The people, when asked about individuals, compare the logical strength of the arguments relating any sets to which the individual belongs, to other sets. A three-tiered system of rules including rules of System P as well as Transitivity and Monotonicity is developed. The system, known as System LS for logical strength, deals with three levels of non-strict relationships: α | ∼1 β α are normally β (more than half of the α are β); α | ∼2 β some α are β; α | ∼3 β a relationship, α | ∼3 β, has been derived but it is possible that no α are β. The rules of the system give the logical consequences of the relationships between the sets in the premises at the three levels. Several problems, including some well-known benchmark problems, are discussed, illustrating the inferences that System LS derives.
Influencing nonmonotonic reasoning by modifier strength manipulation Kristien Dieussaert (kristie... more Influencing nonmonotonic reasoning by modifier strength manipulation Kristien Dieussaert ([email protected]) Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, 102 Tiensestraat, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium Marilyn Ford ([email protected]) School of Computing and Information Technology, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia, 4111 Leon Horsten ([email protected]) Department of Philosophy, University of Leuven, 2 Kardinaal Mercierplein, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium default reasoning. Since the long-term goal of most AI researchers is to simulate human reasoning, and since we do not have an objective theory of what rational default reasoning is, Pelletier and Elio (1997) argue that a psychologistic view of default reasoning should be adopted. Thus, the data that any default system should cover should be determined by the practices of ordinary people. We agree with the importance of investigating human reasoning by controlled experimental research t...
Probabilistic models of corpus data can be used to predict higher-level grammatical choices and t... more Probabilistic models of corpus data can be used to predict higher-level grammatical choices and to quantify changes in such choices across different speaker groups in geographic or social space and in historical time. The present study uses probabilistic models in a novel way, to measure and compare the syntactic predictive capacities of speakers of different varieties of the same language. The present study shows that speakers knowledge of probabilistic grammatical choices can vary across different varieties of the same language and can be detected psycholinguistically in the individual. Given evidence of probabilistic changes in the English dative alternation across varieties of English, we examined responses to the verb-argument dependencies in the English dative alternation by six different groups of American and Australian subjects in three parallel psycholinguistic experiments * We thank Gabriel Recchia, Nick Romero, and Richard Futrell for assistance with data collection.
People seem adept at drawing tentative conclusions when premises do not lead to a necessary concl... more People seem adept at drawing tentative conclusions when premises do not lead to a necessary conclusion. In contrast, the artificial nonmonotonic reasoning systems that have been developed are complex and do not function with ease. This apparent difference between human and artificial computational reasoning is sometimes considered puzzling and frustrating -if people can do it so easily, why can't we get computers to do it easily? The present paper explores the ways in which people attempt to solve nonmonotonic problems which contain conflict and shows that people do not in fact reason about these nonmonotonic problems so easily; they jump to conclusions easily, but they do not reason so well. However, some people do manage to sometimes reason quite well, in that their reasoning is based on ideas that are (classically) logically justifiable. This paper explores differences between these reasoners and others who cope less well. It also explores how the identification of the way in which these people reason can be used to inform artificial nonmonotonic reasoning systems. It is well known in the literature on human reasoning that people are not adept at deductive reasoning . It is often asserted that this stands in stark contrast to our everyday commonsense reasoning Pelletier & Elio, in press). In everyday reasoning, much of the information we deal with is uncertain and does not cover all cases and so the required reasoning often cannot be deductive. The reasoning is often nonmonotonic in that, unlike deductive reasoning, the number of conclusions drawn will not necessarily increase as the number of premises increases -as we get more information, some conclusions might need to be retracted (for overviews, see Ginsberg, 1987; Lukaszewicz, 1991;. Throughout the history of nonmonotonic reasoning in Artificial Intelligence (AI), it has been assumed that people, unlike artificial systems that have been developed, cope well with such reasoning . Psychologists seem to agree with the idea that people cope well:
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