This research, by a team of cognitive scientists at the University of Texas at Austin, develops a theory of attitudes. The theory is based on logical and computational models. In particular, the dynamics of attitudes, the mechanism by which they change in response to information input, are being investigated. Modeling of attitudes is important to knowledge and database systems since automated natural language processing systems have proved unable to understand unrestricted narrative, exposition, or dialogue without additional contextual information such as the attitudes of speaker and listener. Models and systems which bring this additional context to bear are therefore crucial.
