Conversation theory is a pedagogical, dialectical, and cybernetic framework that examines conversation, cognition and learning in the context of two conversational participants who attempt to establish what is meant by a topic during a conversation. In effect, each participant attempts to converge towards a common understanding with the other as to the significance of the said topic between themselves.For Gordon Pask's main works of conversation theory, see , , and respectively. The theory provides a formal dialectical framework that examines how conversational participants may modulate the conceptualisation processes of each participant throughout a conversational interaction.
A conversational interaction is characterised as a shared learning process: Each participant takes turns within the interaction—switching at intervals between the role of a student or the role of a teacher—to achieve a state of mutual understanding between themselves. In this sense, the theory concerns itself with how two a priori asynchronous cognitive systems—either mechanical or organic in nature—are able to converse and conceptualise about a topic, in such a way that each system achieves the a posteriori synchronization of each cognitive system's particular perspective or attitude towards said topic. This resultant synchronization allows each conversational participant to satisfy some shared task or goal.
Conversation theory provides an experimental framework that heavily utilizes both human-computer interaction frameworks and computer-theoretic models, in order to create a testable framework explaining how conversational interactions may lead to the emergence of shared knowledge between participants. The theory was developed by Gordon Pask, who worked with Bernard Scott, Dionysius Kallikourdis, Robin McKinnon-Wood, and others during its initial development and implementation. also notes other contributors including: Brian Lewis, Robin Bailey, David Ensor, Tony Newton, Valary Robinson, Robert Newton, Elizibeth Pask, V. Midora and N. Green. Ranulph Glanville and Paul Pangaro also contributed to the application and implementation of the framework in subsequent periods.
Overview Conversation theory is a formal theory—with practical applications—describing how conversation modulates conceptualisation processes between conversational participants. Both experimentation and learning exercises are enacted in the practical application of the theory, in order to verify if a consensus has been established between conversational participants in relation to some aim or goal. for example, provides design considerations for both search engines and educational technology with conversation theory as a theoretical base. Meanwhile, suggests we may use conversation theory as a framework for designing computational agents, using Large Language Models, to emulate and build shared knowledge representations via dialogue. The theory prioritizes analysing learning and teaching approaches related to education, rather than other concerns about conversational forms. Historically, Gordon Pask and his associates at System Research Ltd., attempted to examine the learning and intellectual development of conversational participants by means of human-machine interactions; thereby sufficiently providing a psychological framework with educational technological applications. Pask's initial motivation for developing conversation theory, was to study and evaluate the nature of cybernetic inquiry via a cybernetic framework.In order to achieve this, Pask incorporated a variety of psychological, pedagogical and philosophical influences, such as Lev Vygotsky, R. D. Laing and George H. Mead and others.For further information see , and .
Conversation
A conversation—in the context of conversation theory—involves a learning exchange between conversational participants. Because of this, participants engaging in a discussion about a subject matter make their knowledge claims explicit through the means of various conversational transactions.According to , conversation is distinguished from the mere exchange of information as seen in information theory, by the fact that utterances are interpreted within the context of a given perspective of such a learning system. It is postulated that if one conversational participant is to be aware of another participant's conception of a topic, then both participants must be able to converse with each other about that topic in such a way that it can be demonstrated that there is a common understanding as to the significance said topic. Since meanings are agreed during the course of a conversation, and since purported agreements can be illusory—whereby each conversational participant may assume a shared understanding of a given topic with their partner which may then be verified as false—an empirical approach to the study of conversation would require stable reference points during such conversational exchanges between peers so as to permit reproducible results.
Using computer theoretical models of cognition, conversation theory can document these intervals of understanding that arise in the conversations between two participating individuals, such that the development of individual and collective understandings can be analysed rigorously. In this way, Pask has been argued to have been an early pioneer in AI-based educational approaches: Having proposed that advances in computational media may enable conversational forms of interactions to take place between man and machine.
Strict Conversation The types of languages that conversation theory demarcates in its approach include (i) language regarding the experiment itself and (ii) languages used by the experimental participants during the course of an experiment. Within conversation theory, a dialogue is said to display different modalities: This is based on how an observer chooses to frame a language under observation within the context of an experiment. The types of languages considered in conversation theory are as follows: Natural languages used for general discussions outside of the experiment; object languages which are the subject of inquiry during an experiment, and finally the metalanguage which is used to talk about the design, management, and results on an experiment.
For the purposes of experimentation and observation, all conversational transactions within a given interaction under observation take the form of a strict conversation: That is, a conversation where (i) there is an agreement to limit the conversational engagement to a finite number of topics, and (ii) there exists some experimenter who documents each iteration of a participant's ongoing understanding of a given topic during a conversation. Such strict conversations are monitored though a cooperative externalisation technique (CET) which involves participants agreeing to externalise their—normally private—cognitive events within the context of a strictly observable experiment.
Each experiment operates under the principle of there existing a CET heuristic. This heuristic refers to the assumption—held by both the experimenter and each participant of the strict conversation—that (i) one participant is able to correctly interpret another participant's understanding of a topic through constructing an explanation of said topic, and (ii) that such an understanding persist for the remainder of a given conversational interaction.
Object Language
The object language differs from most formal languages, by virtue of being "a command and question language[,] not an assertoric language like [a] predicate calculus". It priorities the sematic and pragmatic aspects of language rather than the syntactical features of propositions and their corresponding truth or falsity values. It is often formally illustrated and embodied in the form of a conversational skeleton within conversation theory, which forms the basic unit of a conversational interactions between a collection of conversational participants . This unit is contextualized as an extended learning system whose internal states are changed and modulated through the course of the conversation.
Since conversation theory specifically focuses on learning and development within agents capable of cognition and conversation, the object language is separated into two distinct modes of conversing; a likeness of which, resembles the distinction between procedural knowledge and declarative knowledge in epistemology. Firstly, there is conversation which happens at the level of of an object language, which is concerned with "how to “do” a topic: how to recognize it, construct it, maintain it and so on". Meanwhile, the level of an object language is "concerned with explaining or justifying what a topic means in terms of other topics". This is expressed by the ordered-pair .
The conversational architecture which embodies an object language consists of the following components: Firstly, there are topic relations which may be discussed; secondly, there are speech-acts or descriptions that may be used to converse about said topics; thirdly, a series of procedural repertoires which act to modulate conversational and activity-based input and outputs, and finally a modelling facility whereby conversational participants may collaboratively build working models of a topic with each other. These components—when put together in the form of a conversational skeleton—provide the most basic unit of conversation within conversation theory.
Command and Question Language The object language is also a language of commands and questions within conversation theory. In essence, this framing merely highlights another modality of the object language: One that frames the object language in terms of the type of speech acts that may be used when enacting different levels of itself. In a conversation between and , if the later participant acknowledges the former participant's statements of intent as corresponding to a command or question if they view that behaviour as legal within the confines of the conversational interaction.
On level of the command and question language, the use of both commands and questions are active: Commands at this level are intended to direct the recipient to act in ways that may generate solutions to a problem, while the use of questions is intended to generate explanations from the recipient regarding what they are doing in a given activity. On level of the language meanwhile, the use of both commands and questions are reflective: The intent of commands is to get the recipient to construct a model that describes what they have done, while the use of questions is intended to get the recipient to provide a step-by-step explanation as to how it was solved and to check if any errors of incompatible relations occurred in the construction of the model.
There are three basic conversational transaction types within the language, which include: Commands, questions, and explanations. There also exist cognitive procedures simply known as executions. Such cognitive procedures operate and are enacted upon a modelling facility, which may allow conversational participants to co-design via the synthesis of partial models and some working model. Meanwhile, if such cognitive procedures are to be converted to a speech-act or description of some topic relation, then such an utterance would also be composed of linguistic expressions that help compose its sense.
Below is a table of operation types that may be enacted within a conversational interaction: +Conversational OperationsOperationTypeLogical AbbreviationFormal DefinitionTransformational StructureCommandConversational transactionQuestionConversational transactionExplanationConversational transactionExecutionCognitive procedure