Identification knowledge

Amin, Rajan, Max Bramer, and Richard Emslie. Intelligent Data Analysis for Conservation Experiments With Rhino Horn Fingerprint Identification. Knowledge-Based Systems 16 (2003) 329-336. 

Identification knowledge is probably the most common gateway to schema activation. The central function of identification knowledge is pattern recognition. It is this knowledge that contributes to the initial recognition of a situation, event, or experience. 

How is a schema selected Schema selection occurs as the result of pattern matching that utilizes the individual s identification knowledge. Once the basic situation is recognized, the individual then accesses the necessary elaboration knowledge for additional details. 

Identification knowledge. It is important to keep in mind that the central function of identification knowledge is pattern recognition. 

Identification knowledge. The principal constraint for the Compare situation is the presence of two comparable items. This usually means that there will be two very similar statements having the following form X has property x and Y has property y. It is necessary that x and y be of the same unit (or be transformable by some operation into comparable units). One may not meaningfully compare dollars and hours, for example. 

Identification knowledge. Once again, time plays a key role in the recognition of a situation. In the Vary situation, the primary constraint is that a relationship is expressed that will remain pertinent over time. The relationship binds two very different things either two distinct categories (e.g., for every dog there are three bones.. . . ) or one thing and a numerable property (e.g., each apple costs 35 cents.. . . ). The important aspect is that the relationship holds for more than a single instance and is almost infinitely extensible. That is, it is true for every dog, for example, not just a specific one, and it holds not just for one apple but for as many apples as one cares to purchase. Thus, the relationship expressed has a different nature than that of the Restate situation, which demands specificity. Often, the Vary situation has a conditional form, either explicitly stated as If X, then Y or implicitly expressed. 

Schema knowledge. The first lesson in SPS focuses almost exclusively on identification knowledge. Its purpose is to establish the boundaries of the domain. The student is expected to learn that there are five basic situations, and he or she should acquire some...

Schema knowledge. Most of the second phase of instruction focuses on elaboration knowledge and attempts to tie it to the newly learned identification knowledge. There are important verbal and visual details to be learned, and it is imperative at this point that students acquire both of these aspects of elaboration knowledge.

These experiments provide evidence of students acquisition of identification knowledge, elaboration knowledge, and planning knowledge. They yield a great deal of information about how schemas for problem solving develop. 

Patterns are as important to the development of strong schemas as skills are. It is through pattern recognition that a schema is initially activated, and the information stored as identification knowledge is essential. Just as skills alone do not constitute a schema, patterns alone also do not suffice. In the absence of the other necessary schema components - elaboration, planning, and execution knowledge - one has only a concept, not a schema. 

All instruction and exercises were displayed on the monitor, and the student responded using a three-button optical mouse. Only the first session - the introduction to the five situations - is described here. Details from other sessions are described later in this volume. As I pointed out in chapter 5, this first session is critical because it is the point at which students develop their initial identification knowledge and acquire the ability to recognize the situations. Hence, this initial session is very important for schema formation. 

What have we learned from PSE First, it is possible to isolate planning knowledge and to examine individual differences in how students develop plans. We can examine direct linkages between planning knowledge and other critical aspects of a schema, such as identification knowledge and elaboration knowledge. We can follow the student s execution of the plan and observe the order with which he or she carries out the necessary steps. 

It is fair to say that markers convey their information as a whole, whereas templates require a parsing of the elements that make up the whole. The two functions are clearly related to each other but they are not identical. Students are content to deal with markers as a whole and make no attempt to work with their different parts, as they do with templates. Moreover, it is possible to acquire the identification knowledge associated with the marker while still lacking the elaboration knowledge required for detailed mapping of problems to templates (as shown in chapter 7). And, the converse may also happen, that is, acquisition of the elaboration knowledge without the identification knowledge. 

Students indicate their acquisition of identification knowledge on two exercises. Both exercises require the student to apply identification knowledge in order to judge whether the conditions necessary for a particular situation have been met. For one exercise, the... 

SPS does not assess planning in isolation.1 Its exercises were designed to look at planning and goal setting with respect to elaboration and identification knowledge. These exercises all use complex problems involving several situations and query the student about how to deal with them. 

To evaluate the conjunction of planning and identification knowledge, SPS asks the student to identify first the situation that corresponds to the primary question asked in a problem and then to recognize the (unstated) secondary question and its associated situation. The exercise that assesses their understanding requires two menu choices of the student, one for the overall situation and one for the embedded, or secondary, one. Each item thus contributes 0-2 points, one for the correct primary question and one for the correct secondary question. The planning-identification score is the total number of correct identifications made on all items in this exercise. 

Note ID = identification exercises, ELAB = elaboration exercises, PLAN ID = exercises requiring both planning and identification knowledge, PLAN ELAB = exercises requiring both elaboration and planning knowledge. 

One can argue that it is feasible to make an initial assessment only with respect to students development of identification knowledge, that is, that part of schema knowledge that contains the major features and conditions required for the situation to exist. This is the approach taken in SPS. The assessment may take the form of simple recognition (i.e., What is this ) or of justification (i.e., What makes it a good example ). The situations used in the assessment need to be meaningful to the students and to reflect with emphasis the characteristics developed in instruction. They should not be identical to situations presented in instruction, however, because students need to develop the skills involved in understanding the details of new instances of a known situation. 

Conventional types of objective assessment can be used for this evaluation. One might present a sequence of distinct situations embedded in very different stories with a multiple-choice menu of situation names (as done in SPS). An extension to the assessment requires the justification of response choice for each task. Not only does the student identify the situation, but he or she also indicates which features of the situation influenced the choice. This type of assessment should strengthen the bonds between elaboration and identification knowledge. We often use this type of task in interviews. 

Connectionist models are attractive for modeling schemas for a number of reasons. First, the underlying structure of a schema is hypothesized to be a network, and it seems only appropriate to use a network model to simulate it. More specifically, identification knowledge in a schema involves pattern recognition, and the main attraction of neural nets lies in their ability to recognize patterns. Additionally, aspects of elaboration knowledge also involve parallel processing and are well modeled by connectionist models. 

Identification knowledge has to do with recognizing patterns. The question of interest is whether the stimulus problem contains a pattern of elements sufficient to activate an existing schema. The pattern recognition is accomplished by a connectionist component of the model. 

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