Finding Common Ground: A Method for Measuring Recent Temporal Context in Analyses of Complex, Collaborative Thinking

Abstract

Complex, collaborative thinking is often conceptualized as a process of developing cognitive connections among the contributions of different participants. A central problem in modeling collaboration in this way is thus determining, for any contribution to a discussion, the appropriate context for modeling the connections being made--that is, for determining the appropriate recent temporal context. Recent temporal context is typically defined using a moving window of fixed length. However, that length is dependent on the setting, and there are no existing methods for reliably determining an appropriate window length. This paper presents an empirical method for measuring recent temporal context, and thus for defining an appropriate window length to be used in analyses of complex, collaborative thinking. Importantly, the method we describe minimizes the need for human annotation while providing both qualitative and quantitative warrants for choosing a particular window length.