The ‘Problem of Extracting the Knowledge of Experts fkom the Perspective of Experimental Psychology

The first step in the development of an expert system is the extraction and charac-terization of the knowledge and skills of an expert. This step is widely regarded as the major bottleneck in the system develop-ment process To assist knowledge engi-neers and others who might be interested in the development of an expert system, I offer (1) a working classification of meth-ods for extracting an expert’s knowledge, (2) some ideas about the types of data that the methods yield, and (3) a set of criteria by which the methods can be compared relative to the needs of the system develop-er The discussion highlights certain issues, including the contrast between the empiri-cal approach taken by experimental psy-chologists and the formalism-oriented approach that is generally taken by cognitive scientist