Question answering in the context of scientific mechanisms

Abstract This study tested a model of question answering, called QUEST, which accounts for answers to open-class questions. QUEST specifies the information sources that furnish answers to a question, the pragmatic aspects of the communicative exchange, and the convergence mechanisms that select good answers within an information source. This study tested predictions of the convergence mechanisms. In study 1, college students read event chains on biological, technological, and physical processes. Subjects generated answers to five types of questions about the events: why, how, when, what enabled, and what are the consequences. In study 2, subjects judged the quality of answers to particular questions about the events. The results of the two studies supported two of QUEST's convergence components: (1) an arc search procedure, which specifies legal paths of nodes connecting a queried event with an answer event and (2) structural distance.

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