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Inferential and Expressive Capacities of Graphical Representations: Survey and Some Generalizations

  • Conference paper
Diagrammatic Representation and Inference (Diagrams 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2980))

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Abstract

Thanks to recent as well as age-old theoretical studies, we now find at least four important concepts that seem to capture the crucial functional traits of varieties of graphical representations. They are, roughly, the following concepts:

  • Free ride properties: expressing a certain set of information in the system always results in the expression of another, consequential piece of information. The concept has been suggested or proposed, under various names, as an explanation of certain automaticity of inference conducted with the help of graphical systems (Lindsay [1]; Sloman [2]; Barwise and Etchemendy [3]; Larkin and Simon [4]; Shimojima [5]).

  • Auto-consistency: incapacity of the system to express a certain range of inconsistent sets of information. The concept has been suggested as an explanation of the ease of consistency inferences done with the help of graphical systems (Barwise and Etchemendy [6]; Barwise and Etchemendy [7]; Stenning and Inder [8]; Gelernter [9]; Lindsay [1]; Shimojima [10]).

  • Specificity: incapacity of the system to express certain sets of information without choosing to express another, non-consequential piece of information. The concept has been suggested or proposed as an explanation of the difficulty of expressing “abstract” information in certain graphical systems. (Berkeley [11]; Dennett [12]; Pylyshyn [13]; Sloman [2]; Stenning and Oberlander [14]; Shimojima [5]).

  • Meaning derivation properties: capacity to express semantic contents not defined in the basic semantic conventions, but only derivable from them. The concept has been offered as an explanation of the richness of semantic contents of graphics in certain systems. (Kosslyn [15]; Shimojima [16]).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, School of Knowledge Science,  

    Atsushi Shimojima

  2. ATR Media Information Science Laboratories,  

    Atsushi Shimojima

Authors
  1. Atsushi Shimojima
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, CB3 0FD, Cambridge, UK

    Alan F. Blackwell

  2. Clayton School of IT Monash University, 3800, Australia

    Kim Marriott

  3. Faculty of Culture and Information Science, Doshisha University, Japan

    Atsushi Shimojima

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Shimojima, A. (2004). Inferential and Expressive Capacities of Graphical Representations: Survey and Some Generalizations. In: Blackwell, A.F., Marriott, K., Shimojima, A. (eds) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2980. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25931-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-25931-2_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-21268-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-25931-2

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