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In-depth understanding : a computer model of integrated processing for narrative comprehension

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Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral--Yale University, 1982).This book describes a theory of memory representation, organization, and processing for understanding complex narrative texts. The theory is implemented as a computer program called BORIS which reads and answers questions about divorce, legal disputes, personal favors, and the like. The system is unique in attempting to understand stories involving emotions and in being able to deduce adages and morals, in addition to answering fact and event based questions about the narratives it has read. BORIS also manages the interaction of many different knowledge sources such as goals, plans, scripts, physical objects, settings, interpersonal relationships, social roles, emotional reactions, and empathetic responses.The book makes several original technical contributions as well. In particular, it develops a class of knowledge constructs called Thematic Abstraction Units (TAUs) which share similarities with other representational systems such as Schank's Thematic Organization Packets and Lehnert's Plot Units. TAUs allow BORIS to represent situations which are more abstract than those captured by scripts, plans, and goals. They contain processing knowledge useful in dealing with the kinds of planning and expectation failures that characters often experience in narratives; and, they often serve as episodic memory structures, organizing events which involve similar kinds of planning failures and divergent domains.An appendix contains a detailed description of a demon-based parser, a kernel of the BORIS system, as well as the actual LISP code of a microversion of this parser and a number of exercises for expanding it into a full-fledged story-understander.Michael G. Dyer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UCLA. His book is included in The MIT Press Artificial Intelligence Series.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Artificial Intelligence Series

Call Number

001 DYE i

Publisher

Cambridge, Mass. : : MIT Press,., 1983

Collation

1 online resource (xvii, 458 pages).

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0262256061

Classification

001

Content Type

text

Media Type

computer

Carrier Type

online resource

Edition

-

Subject(s)

Artificial Intelligence
Comprehension

Specific Detail Info

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Statement of Responsibility

Michael George Dyer.

Other Information

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Source

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Validator

maya

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/3697.001.0001

Journal Volume

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Journal Issue

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