ORDERING THE CHAOS IN PARTICIPANT SUBMITTED APPRAISALS

The aim of this design document is to establish some structure for
free-form appraisals.  We want to tease out the implicit structure and
parameterize it without accidentally creating obstacles to creative
and varied appraisal.

WLJ: I've often found that what seems obvious and true to me is not so
obvious and true to another.  By the time I've slogged through the
whole thing with them, the original idea is often refined quite a bit.



			   *** CONTEXT ***

The representation of context is guided by Baron-Cohen's Theory of
Mind.

WSJ: A good theory of mind would be able to generate believable
affective evaluations from any perspective.  Perspective (e.g. whether
it is from Mommy's eyes, or Tracy's eyes, or the readers eyes) should
be a parameter that delineates the range of sentences that comprise
the items we use in our experiment.  Perspective taking ability is a
key function of the TOMM and is also what is believed to be impaired
in Autistic Spectrum Disorders.


** PARTICIPATING-AGENT: Associated with each cue is a list of
intentional agents.  Anthropomorphic agents are OK for
inclusion. Situation cues may involve many agents.

The agent may participate from afar, like a general participates in a
war by directing it to very directly, like where daddy actually
physically touches hot chocolate making instruments.

Two agents are the minimum needed to construct TOM propositions.  For
our simple appraisal model, there are exactly two participants for any
given appraisal.  Initially, we will not consider appraisals involving
more than two participating-agents.

Example:

  Goal: Eric wants to go in the car.
  Situation: Eric and his daddy are going on the train.

  participating-agents: Eric, his daddy


** APPRAISING-AGENT: Who is appraising the situation?  An appraisal is
the appraising-agent's opinion about or construal of the situation
cue.

+ The appraising-agent is one of the participating-agents.  [Possible
counter-example: In Newton's Watchmaker's universe, God is not a
participatingAgent in TheUnfoldingOfEverdayEvents.  But He certainly
weeps (i.e. is a is an appraiser) when bad stuff happens.]

+ There is exactly one appraising-agent for every appraisal.  [An
exception might be the Borg on Star Trek where they think
collectively.  And then again, I can see a different kind of thinking,
less materialistically defined which CAN involve two people (e.g. "The
thinking of Marx and Engles occured most intensely between the years
of XXXX".)]

Example:

  Goal: Eric wants to go in the car.
  Situation: Eric and his daddy are going on the train.
  Question: How will Eric feel when he goes on the train?

  participating-agents: Eric, his daddy
  appraising-agent = Eric


** MINDREADER: Who is mindreading the appraisal?  This may be a third
party, a computer model (KM or otherwise), Daddy, or Toby.

When the KM model is running, then the computer is the mindreader.
When Joe Blow is surfing the internet filling out our survey, then Joe
Blow is the mindreader. For the sake of keeping things simple for the
beginning, the mindreader should usually *not* be a
participatingAgents.