Interpretation formation as Constraint Satisfaction
Edwin Hutchins, Cognition_in_the_Wild
Warship control bridge
Many important human activities are conducted by systems in which multiple actors attempt to form coherent interpretations of some set of phenomena. Some of these systems are small, composed of only a few individuals, while others are very large indeed.
The
operation of a complex system is often accomplished by a team. A shift of operators at a nuclear power plant
, an aircraft flight crew, or the bridge
team on a large ship is a small system in which multiple individuals strive to
maintain an interpretation of the situation at hand.
Electric
transmission grid control room
The
complexity of a system may make it impossible for a single individual to
integrate all the required information, or the several members of the group may
be present because of other task demands but may be involved in distributed
interpretation formation.
Air
Traffic Area Control room
Forming an interpretation is an instance of what computer scientists call a constraint -satisfaction problem. Any coherent interpretation consists of a number of parts; call them hypotheses. Some of the parts go together with others or support one another; others exclude or inhibit one another. These relationships among the parts of the interpretation are called constraints.
Evidence
from the world makes some of the hypotheses of the interpretation more or less likely. These hypotheses that are directly driven by
evidence have constraining relations to other hypotheses for which there is,
perhaps , no direct evidence.
Air
Traffic aerodrom tower control
The job of forming an interpretation can thus be seen as attempting to assign likelihoods to the various hypotheses in such a way that the constraints among the hypotheses and between the hypotheses and the evidence in the world are as well satisfied as is possible.
Good
interpretation is one that is both internally consistent and in agreement with
the available data. Evidence from the
world makes some of the hypotheses of the interpretation more or less likely. These hypotheses that are directly driven by
evidence have constraining relations to other hypotheses for which there is,
perhaps , no direct evidence.
