Character tracking and the understanding of narratives
Brian J. Reiser · 1981
Recent work on the understanding of natural language narratives has emphasized representations composed of goals, plans, and their outcomes. Causal chains [121, hierarchical goal/outcome graphs [3] [16], story grammar parse trees [9] [10] [15], and causally linked networks [6] [7] have been proposed as models of the mental representation of a story. A problem that has received little attention however is the influence of perspective in understanding a narrative. Perspective may operate on many levels. Inputs are understood by evaluating them in terms of the system's knowledge, which is often based on subjectively interpreted personal experiences. Thus, understanders having different belief systems may interpret the same story in different ways [5]. Perspective also affects understanding by serving to focus the processing. Attention becomes focused on one key character