ion getLL();Get the lower level abstraction of this entity. Void setLL(In Abstraction abst); Set the lower level abstraction of this entity. Abstraction getHL();Get the higher level abstraction of thisentity.ion getHL();Get the higher level abstraction of thisentity. Void setHL(In Abstraction abst); Set the higher level abstraction of this entity. Operations on Factories Res...

When conflicts and disagreements cannot be resolved because there is no common ground, it might be better to replace the fight for ‘the truth’ by an exchange of arguments whose primary purpose is not to ‘win’ but to stimulate reflection, creativity, and perspective shifts. This is what I call “reflective argumentation” by contrast to three better known approaches to argument which Christoph Lum...

In this paper, we present a computational approach to understanding and augmenting the conversational knowledge process that is a collective activity for knowledge creation, management, and application, where conversational communications are used as a primary means of interaction among participating agents. The key idea is conversation quantization, a technique of approximating a continuous fl...

Social behavior depends on sensory input from the visual, mechanical and olfactory systems. One important issue concerns the relative roles of each sensory modality in guiding behavior. The role of visual inputs has been examined by isolating visual stimuli from mechanical and chemosensory stimuli. In some studies (Bruski & Dunham, 1987: Delgado-Morales et al., 2004) visual inputs have been rem...

The author describes a system for defining conversation policies that allows conversants to exchange explicit representations of how they use messages to get things done. This system allows conversation policies to be defined for one or more conversation partners. It does not require that every partner be aware of the other’s conversation policies; however, it does provide more capabilities if ...

A café table is a traditional setting for conversation. Tabletop displays may have an active role in this connection. In particular for a museum scenario, conversation after the visit is important for a joint elaboration of a small group visit experience. We propose the museum café as the location to introduce a tabletop display meant to foster and support conversation about the visit. The goal...

This paper presents a pattern for generating persistence methods in runtime, using the Java API Reflection, with high levels of maintainability and reusability.

Existing open-domain human-computer conversation systems are typically passive: they either synthesize or retrieve a reply provided with a humanissued utterance. It is generally presumed that humans should take the role to lead the conversation and introduce new content when a stalemate occurs, and that computers only need to “respond.” In this paper, we propose STALEMATEBREAKER, a conversation...

This research examined whether children with autism could be trained to improve their conversational skills and whether this led to changes in standard tests of theory of mind (ToM). Three high-functioning children with autism participated in a multiple baseline across participants design. The children were taught how to initiate a conversation, take turns during conversation, listen attentivel...