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Representational Interpretive Structure: Theory and Notation

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Diagrammatic Representation and Inference (Diagrams 2022)

Abstract

A cognitive theory of the interpretive structure of visual representations (RIST) was proposed by Cheng (2020), which identified four classes of schemas that specify how domain concepts are encoded by graphical objects. A notation (RISN) for building RIST models as networks of these schemas was also introduced. This paper introduces common RIST/RISN network structures – idioms – that occur across varied representations. A small-scale experiment is presented in which three participants successfully modelled their own interpretation of three diverse representations using RIST/RISN and idioms.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Pronounced like “wrist” (/ˈɹɪst/) and “risen” (/ˈɹɪzən/), respectively.

  2. 2.

    Figure 3 was drawn in a web browser tool, RIS Editor (RISE), that was specifically developed for creating RISN models. The tool will be presented in a paper to follow.

  3. 3.

    A schema is a mental knowledge representation for a category defined by a set of attributes (slots) for which a particular instance of a concept is assigned values (fillers); e.g., [16].

  4. 4.

    R-symbol supersedes Token used in [4] for reasons of notational and theoretical consistency.

  5. 5.

    ‘The Round Flow of Money Income and Expenditure, 1922’: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Round_Flow_of_Money_Income_and_Expenditure,_1922.jpg.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the EPSRC grants EP/R030642/1, EP/T019603/1, EP/T019034/1 and EP/R030650/1.

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Correspondence to Peter C.-H. Cheng .

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Cheng, P.CH., Stockdill, A., Garcia Garcia, G., Raggi, D., Jamnik, M. (2022). Representational Interpretive Structure: Theory and Notation. In: Giardino, V., Linker, S., Burns, R., Bellucci, F., Boucheix, JM., Viana, P. (eds) Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13462. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15146-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15146-0_4

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