Retrieving Documents by Constrained Spreading Activation on Automatically Constructed Hypertexts

We report on the design of a system that enables the user to perform retrieval of items of interest both by browsing an automatically constructed very large hypertext and by spreading activation on the hypertext network itself. It is this second option that is particularly interesting since it enables the user to retrieve items that have not been visited, but that are similar to items flagged as relevant during the browsing. The spreading of activation from relevant items to similar items is achieved using a form of “constrained spreading activation”. This is a kind of spreading activation controlled by heuristic rules that limit and direct the activation towards the most promising links and node of the hypertext.