Research Group Computational Models of Misunderstanding for Complex Instructional Texts

Independent Junior Research Group Computational Models of Misunderstanding for Complex Instructional Texts (MisT), Head Dr. Michael Roth

Welcome to the Emmy Noether research group Computational Models of Misunderstanding!

The research group Computational Models of Misunderstanding, headed by Dr. Michael Roth, deals with the systematic analysis and computational modelling of text passages that can lead to misunderstandings. In this context, we define the "potential for misunderstanding" as an omission or ambiguity on the basis of which a reader of a text can arrive at an interpretation that seems plausible in itself, but was not intended by the author.

Let us take the following sentence from a board game manual as an example: "In each round a player performs an action, starting with the starting player." – Can only one player perform an action per round, or can every player act in each round? And in what order do the players take their turn? The interpretation intended by the author remains unclear, as relevant aspects of meaning have only been expressed ambiguously or not explicitly at all.

This research group creates resources and tools for the automatic recognition of text passages that are potentially misleading. In our current work, we design processes for retrieving text segments from which misunderstandings potentially arise and we develop computational methods that can identify such segments automatically.

DFG Project Page

DFG Emmy Noether research group "Computational Models of Misunderstanding for Complex Instructional Texts"

This image shows Michael Roth

Michael Roth

Dr.

Emmy Noether Group Leader

Nicola Fanton

 

Doctoral Researcher

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