A survey of methods for eliciting the knowledge of experts

Abstract

A variety of methods have been used by expert system developers to elicit experts' knowledge and reasoning strategies. Additionally, a number of methods have been used by experimental psychologists to explore hypotheses about the nature of expertise. Methods can be placed into three broad categories: (1) Analyses of the tasks that experts perform, (2) Interview techniques, and (3) Special tasks. A comparison of knowledge elicitation methods yields recommendations about how expert system developers can deal with the "knowledge acquisition bottleneck."