Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

It is our goal to build cooperative problem solving systems, knowledge-based systems that leverage the asymmetry between the user's and the system's strengths and thus allow the dyad of user and computer system to achieve what neither alone could achieve. Our experience has shown that in these cooperative systems, the need for explanations is even more evident than in traditional expert systems. This is due to the fact that these new systems are more open-ended and flexible and therefore allow for more possibilities in which a user can reach an impasse, a point at which it is not clear how to proceed. Observation of human-human problem solving shows that people are sensitive to the domain under discussion and the other's knowledge of that domain. People tend to construct explanations that are minimal in the number of concepts or chunks. These explanations are not comprehensive, and the communication partner is able to follow up on aspects which are still unclear.