The Relative Importance of Structural Constraints and Surface Semantics in Information Modeling

Abstract This paper describes an experiment designed to investigate the use of structural constraints and surface semantics by modeling experts. The experimental results indicated that when interpreting information models, modeling experts focused almost entirely on the structural constraints, and ignored the surface semantics, even in situations where the structural constraints were in contradiction to the real world situation. These biases exhibited by modeling experts are explained using the learning model in cognitive psychology.

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