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Causal Reasoning in Medicine: Analysis of a Protocol
Author(s) -
Kuipers Benjamin,
Kassirer Jerome P.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1207/s15516709cog0804_3
Subject(s) - computer science , representation (politics) , knowledge representation and reasoning , process (computing) , domain (mathematical analysis) , mechanism (biology) , qualitative reasoning , domain knowledge , artificial intelligence , initialization , legal expert system , domain model , expert system , protocol (science) , protocol analysis , cognitive science , psychology , mathematics , medicine , mathematical analysis , philosophy , alternative medicine , epistemology , pathology , politics , political science , law , programming language , operating system
The ability to identify and represent the knowledge that a human expert has about a particular domain is a key method in the creation of an expert computer system. The first part of this paper demonstrates a methodology for collecting and analyzing observations of experts at work, in order to find the conceptual framework used for the particular domain. The second part develops a representation for qualitative knowledge of the structure and behavior of a mechanism. The qualitative simulation, or envisionment, process is given a qualitative structural description of a mechanism and some initialization information, and produces a detailed description of the mechanism's behavior. The simulation process has been fully implemented, and its results are shown for a particular disease mechanisms in nephrology. This vertical slice of the construction of a cognitive model demonstrates an effective knowledge acquisition method for the purpose of determining the structure of the representation itself, not simply the content of the knowledge to be encoded in that representation. Most importantly, it demonstrates the interaction among constraints derived from the textbook knowledge of the domain, from observations of the human expert, and from the computational requirements of successful performance.