Enhancing knowledge elicitation using the cognitive interview

摘要

Various knowledge elicitation techniques have been recommended for the development of expert systems, but a review of these techniques reveals that most are designed to elicit rules (i.e. procedural knowledge) from the expert in order to build rule-based expert systems. With the growing interest in case-based expert systems comes the need to introduce and evaluate new knowledge elicitation techniques designed specifically to capture knowledge in the form of cases. Cases represent the unique combination of situational variables and solutions experienced by the expert, i.e. episodic knowledge. This paper reports the finding of a study that investigated the applicability of the Cognitive Interview for eliciting the detail-rich cases required for the development of case-based expert systems. The Cognitive Interview is a technique that was developed specifically to capture episodic knowledge and has been extensively tested for use in other disciplines. This theoretically grounded technique has practical implications for enhanced knowledge elicitation in the development of expert systems.