The recognition and classification of concepts in understanding scientific texts

Abstract

In understanding a novel scientific text, we may distinguish the following processes. First, concepts are built from the logical form of the sentence into the final knowledge structures. This is called concept formation. While these concepts are being formed, they are also being recognized by checking whether they are already in long-term memory (LTM). Then, those concepts which are unrecognized are integrated in LTM. In this paper, algorithms for the recognition and integration of concepts in scientific texts are presented. It is shown that the integration of concepts in understanding scientific texts is essentially a classification task, which determines how and where to integrate them in LTM. In some cases, the integration of concepts results in a reclassification of some of the concepts already stored in LTM. All the algorithms described here have been implemented and are part of SNOWY, a program which reads short scientific paragraphs and answers questions.