Transregio 318 meets for the 2nd TRR Conference
Understanding and how it can be considered in different explanatory contexts is the starting point of this year's 2nd TRR Conference "Measuring Understanding" of the Collaborative Research Centre Transregio (SFB/TRR) 318 of the universities of Bielefeld and Paderborn, which will take place on 6 and 7 November in Paderborn. International scientists will exchange their current research work and approaches. The two renowned keynote speakers Dr. Sylvaine Tuncer from King's Business School at King's College in London and Prof. Dr. Niels Taatgen from the Institute of Computer Science and AI at the University of Groningen will provide participants with further scientific impulses.
"There is a growing recognition in XAI research that understanding is essential for successful explanation," explains Josephine Beryl Fisher of the conference organising team: "Accordingly, the conference topics include various methods and tools for assessing and measuring understanding in a variety of contexts." A fundamental consideration, she says, is that these very contexts will shape the understanding needed. The focus will therefore be on the following frames of reference: (a) dyadic everyday explanations, (b) the context of interpretability and explainability of AI systems, and (c) institutional environments.
The focus of the contributions at the conference will be on the methodological challenge of how to measure and operationalise understanding in different explanatory contexts, including human-human interaction and human-machine interaction. Furthermore, the question will be explored what implications these measurements have for XAI (short for: Explainable Artificial Intelligence).
Lectures on analysis methods of understanding and how understanding is built up
Dr Sylvaine Tuncer (London) will speak on "Unpacking understanding in interaction: Video studies of technologies in use: Video studies of technologies in use"). In her talk, she will show how qualitative video analysis can respond to some of the methodological challenges in studying "understanding" and "explaining" in interaction. Among other things, ways of re-specifying understanding and explaining as continuous, collaborative performances will be proposed. Tuncer will also discuss what different data collection methods make possible in this regard.
The lecture by Prof. Dr. Niels Taatgen (Groningen) is entitled "Cognitive skills: the building blocks of human intelligence". Taatgen points out that humans have the remarkable ability to perform new tasks, sometimes with little or no guidance. According to Taatgen, people can assemble the knowledge required for this task from cognitive abilities as building blocks. In his presentation, he will report on a pilot study from the Netherlands where it was found that in a test on specific mathematical topics, students did not differ in their mastery of these topics, but in more general basic skills such as general arithmetic skills, reading skills and multi-level thinking.
Other programme
In addition to a poster exhibition and a workshop on "Understanding", the conference programme also includes various research tracks and an oral session. For the first time, there will be a Science Slam at the conference, which will be moderated by Karsten Strack. Researchers from various disciplines (psychology and linguistics) will present impressions from their research and everyday scientific life - all in a lyrical and humorous form. Admission to the Science Slam is free. The event can be attended separately from the conference. Registration is possible in advance by sending an e-mail to conference@trr318.uni-paderborn.de.
Further information is available on the website of the SFB TRR 318 and the website of the conference "Measuring Understanding".
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