Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The purpose of this paper is to present and contrast two approaches to representing the structure of complex, dialectical arguments. Previous research has focused mainly on representing single arguments presented by a single arguer; this analysis examines the naturalistic give and take of dialectical argumentation among fourth graders. One approach to representing dialectical arguments is the argument network approach, which views the arguments as webs of interlocking premises and conclusions. The second approach is the causal network approach, which treats many of the ideas presented in the discussions as events linked in causal, narrative sequences. The two approaches capture different but complementary aspects of the structure of the arguments.