The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional Expertise
The study of the sociology of scientific knowledge distinguishes between contributory and interactional experts. Contributory experts have practical expertise—they can “walk the walk.” Interactional experts have internalized the tacit components of expertise—they can “talk the talk” but are not able...
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| Format: | Article |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2021-10-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
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| Online Access: | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.730985/full |
| _version_ | 1818741905460035584 |
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| author | Güler Arsal Joel Suss Paul Ward Vivian Ta Ryan Ringer David W. Eccles |
| author_facet | Güler Arsal Joel Suss Paul Ward Vivian Ta Ryan Ringer David W. Eccles |
| author_sort | Güler Arsal |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | The study of the sociology of scientific knowledge distinguishes between contributory and interactional experts. Contributory experts have practical expertise—they can “walk the walk.” Interactional experts have internalized the tacit components of expertise—they can “talk the talk” but are not able to reliably “walk the walk.” Interactional expertise permits effective communication between contributory experts and others (e.g., laypeople), which in turn facilitates working jointly toward shared goals. Interactional expertise is attained through long-term immersion into the expert community in question. To assess interactional expertise, researchers developed the imitation game—a variant of the Turing test—to test whether a person, or a particular group, possesses interactional expertise of another. The imitation game, which has been used mainly in sociology to study the social nature of knowledge, may also be a useful tool for researchers who focus on cognitive aspects of expertise. In this paper, we introduce a modified version of the imitation game and apply it to examine interactional expertise in the context of blindness. Specifically, we examined blind and sighted individuals’ ability to imitate each other in a street-crossing scenario. In Phase I, blind and sighted individuals provided verbal reports of their thought processes associated with crossing a street—once while imitating the other group (i.e., as a pretender) and once responding genuinely (i.e., as a non-pretender). In Phase II, transcriptions of the reports were judged as either genuine or imitated responses by a different set of blind and sighted participants, who also provided the reasoning for their decisions. The judges comprised blind individuals, sighted orientation-and-mobility specialists, and sighted individuals with infrequent socialization with blind individuals. Decision data were analyzed using probit mixed models for signal-detection-theory indices. Reasoning data were analyzed using natural-language-processing (NLP) techniques. The results revealed evidence that interactional expertise (i.e., relevant tacit knowledge) can be acquired by immersion in the group that possesses and produces the expert knowledge. The modified imitation game can be a useful research tool for measuring interactional expertise within a community of practice and evaluating practitioners’ understanding of true experts. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-18T02:04:03Z |
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| id | doaj.art-9cebf06bfcd34c34bb6e1bffd5b8ca38 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-18T02:04:03Z |
| publishDate | 2021-10-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-9cebf06bfcd34c34bb6e1bffd5b8ca382022-12-21T21:24:40ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782021-10-011210.3389/fpsyg.2021.730985730985The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional ExpertiseGüler Arsal0Joel Suss1Paul Ward2Vivian Ta3Ryan Ringer4David W. Eccles5Envision Research Institute, Envision, Inc., Wichita, KS, United StatesDepartment of Psychology, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, United StatesSocial and Behavioral Sciences, The MITRE Corporation, McLean, VA, United StatesDepartment of Psychology, Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, IL, United StatesDepartment of Psychology, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Wichita State University, Wichita, KS, United StatesDepartment of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems, College of Education, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, United StatesThe study of the sociology of scientific knowledge distinguishes between contributory and interactional experts. Contributory experts have practical expertise—they can “walk the walk.” Interactional experts have internalized the tacit components of expertise—they can “talk the talk” but are not able to reliably “walk the walk.” Interactional expertise permits effective communication between contributory experts and others (e.g., laypeople), which in turn facilitates working jointly toward shared goals. Interactional expertise is attained through long-term immersion into the expert community in question. To assess interactional expertise, researchers developed the imitation game—a variant of the Turing test—to test whether a person, or a particular group, possesses interactional expertise of another. The imitation game, which has been used mainly in sociology to study the social nature of knowledge, may also be a useful tool for researchers who focus on cognitive aspects of expertise. In this paper, we introduce a modified version of the imitation game and apply it to examine interactional expertise in the context of blindness. Specifically, we examined blind and sighted individuals’ ability to imitate each other in a street-crossing scenario. In Phase I, blind and sighted individuals provided verbal reports of their thought processes associated with crossing a street—once while imitating the other group (i.e., as a pretender) and once responding genuinely (i.e., as a non-pretender). In Phase II, transcriptions of the reports were judged as either genuine or imitated responses by a different set of blind and sighted participants, who also provided the reasoning for their decisions. The judges comprised blind individuals, sighted orientation-and-mobility specialists, and sighted individuals with infrequent socialization with blind individuals. Decision data were analyzed using probit mixed models for signal-detection-theory indices. Reasoning data were analyzed using natural-language-processing (NLP) techniques. The results revealed evidence that interactional expertise (i.e., relevant tacit knowledge) can be acquired by immersion in the group that possesses and produces the expert knowledge. The modified imitation game can be a useful research tool for measuring interactional expertise within a community of practice and evaluating practitioners’ understanding of true experts.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.730985/fullblindnesscontributory expertiseimitation gameinteractional expertisenatural-language processingsignal detection |
| spellingShingle | Güler Arsal Joel Suss Paul Ward Vivian Ta Ryan Ringer David W. Eccles The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional Expertise Frontiers in Psychology blindness contributory expertise imitation game interactional expertise natural-language processing signal detection |
| title | The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional Expertise |
| title_full | The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional Expertise |
| title_fullStr | The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional Expertise |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional Expertise |
| title_short | The Modified Imitation Game: A Method for Measuring Interactional Expertise |
| title_sort | modified imitation game a method for measuring interactional expertise |
| topic | blindness contributory expertise imitation game interactional expertise natural-language processing signal detection |
| url | https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.730985/full |
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