On the relationship between repertory grid and term subsumption knowledge structures: theory practice tools

Abstract

A number of practical knowledge acquisition methodologies and tools have been based on the elicitation and analysis of repertory grids. These result in frames and rules that are exported to knowledge-based system shells. In the development of repertory grid tools, the original methodology has been greatly extended to encompass the data types required in knowledge-based systems. However, this has been done on a fairly pragmatic basis, and it has not been clear how the resultant knowledge acquisition systems relate to psychological, or computational, theories of knowledge representation. This paper shows that there is a close correspondence between the intensional logics of knowledge, belief and action developed in the personal construct psychology underlying repertory grids, and the intensional logics for term subsumption knowledge representation underlying KL-ONE-like systems. The paper gives an overview of personal construct psychology and its expression as an intensional logic describing the cognitive processes of anticipatory agents, and uses this to survey knowledge acquisition tools deriving from personal construct psychology. 1 PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY George Kelly was a clinical psychologist who lived between 1905 and 1967, published a two volume work (Kelly, 1955) defining personal construct psychology in 1955, and went on to publish a large number of papers further developing the theory many of which have been issued in collected form (Maher, 1969). Kelly was a keen geometer with experience in navigation and an interest in multi-dimensional geometry. When he came to formalize his theory he took as his model Euclid’s Elements and axiomatized personal construct psychology as a fundamental postulate together with eleven corollaries, terming the primitives involved elements and constructs. Kelly presented his theory as a geometry of psychological space (Kelly, 1969), and his conceptual framework is very clear if seen in these terms.