ak Approved For Release 2000/08/07 ‘eR SPR TSoost oot III METHOD OF APPROACH A. Selection of Data Base To determine a useful set of audiolinguistic (A/L) criteria, it was important in this pilot investigation to work with a RV data base that met two conditions: (1) The data base had been independently analyzed by "blind" judging procedures. (2) The RV targets had to be well-defined. t The first requirement defined the minimum assessment standard; namely, SYD & any A/L technique had to perform at least as well as blind judging procedui#es. The second requirement allowed for an unambiguous element-by-element comparison between target information and RV-generated data, To meet these requirements, an existing data base from earlier SRI experiments was used. In an early attempt to assess the nature of "abstract" targeting, Tar TELH. Subject 504 was the only participant in the "Coordinate Box Experiment." The target material was a collection of 16 small dissimilar objects, placed one each in a 4 x 4 matrix array. Each cell of this matrix was a cube measuring approximately one foot on a side. Subject 504 was targeted with only a row and column address and asked to describe the object at that location, The experiment consisted of six triais. A complete description of this experiment can be found elsewhere.* The overall result derived from blind judging analysis was significant. Two important features of this experiment were (1) the targets were well defined (Figure 1) and (2) the target-transcript correspondences 5 SECRET Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300310001-4
Approved For Release aN CLASSIFIED 300310001-4 6 UNCLASSIFIED Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300310001-4 4 x 4 ARRAY OF OBJECTS USED IN BOX COORDINATE EXPERIMENT UNCLASSIFIED 4 x 4 ARRAY OF OBJECTS USED IN BOX COORDINATE EXPERIMENT (U) FIGURE 1
Approved For Release 2000/08/0 7aaliepia Gla feahe 7 88R001300310001-4 ranged from excellent to rather poor, These two features allowed for a sensitive test of the A/L procedure described below. B. Audiolinguistic Protocol Three out of the six trials from the Coordinate Box Experiment were chosen for study. They represented the best correspondence (doll target), an intermediate level of correspondence (book target), and a poor corre spondence (plant target). A verbatim transcript was produced from each trial (a sample transcript, the one for the best-correspondence case, is shown in Appendix A). First, the utterances were sequentially numbered for ease of reference, Then, on a blind basis, each utterance was cAregor: labeled as belonging to one of four categories, defined on the basis of A/L characteristics as listed below, The first category, Present Time (PT), is defined as that characterized peesewt by_a_slow, dream-like utterance that is usually preceded by a pause. (OREM } Sentences tend to be in the present tense, and are typified by "I feel ...,” "y see...," or "There is ....' The second category, debriefing (DB) is defined to be that charac~ DE RRIEr terized by initial excitement and a higher vocal effort, There is ne frequently an announcement of debriefing such as, "I just got a flash ceeee wianey Debriefing may be characterized by present or past tense statements, / like "I feel ...," "I saw ...," or "There is (was) ...." Although this is similar to pT, the voice quality is considerably different. . RNANSIS The third category, analysis (AN), is defined to be characterized by ADALOGY ASSOCIA. statements that contain analogies and associations with respect to an tt cA] object, e.g., "It looks like ...," or "It reminds me of ..." Utterances that contain generalizations with respect to an object (e.g., "It must be some kind of a ...') are also considered to be analysis. 7 SECRET Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300310001-4
Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : eas 8R001300310001-4 CONVEESA - Finally, the fourth category, conversation (CO), consists of TION questions asked of the experimenter, answers in response to non-task related questions by the experimenter, and general statements directed to the experimenter. The voice quality in this category is matter-of- fact and colloquial, Cc. Scoring the Utterances =CORING The utterances were scored in two separate ways: (1) by a target- dependent scoring procedure and (2) by a target-independent method. Both techniques share a common preprocessing, which is described below. 1. Preprocessing the Utterances The conversation category was first eliminated for all the analysis done in this study. For each of the three remaining A/L categories, EPARI PT, DB, and AN, each utterance was reduced to one or more concepts. A pF 1S © concept is technically defined as a short phrase that best represents the FOR. y ANALY. idea incorporated in the utterance, The concepts are then edited to remove any redundance with the category. A zero in the duplication colum in Appendix B indicates that a particular concept was ignored because it was redundant. The resulting lists of concepts were then analyzed by a target- dependent procedure and by a target-independent method, The following analyses were conducted for each of the three responses chosen for this study. 2. Target-Independent Analysis In the target-independent analysis, a simple count of the WPE ANALCNSIS number of nonredundant concepts in each category is computed, It was WwW] . — HYPOTH E- hypothesized that the percent of PT statements would correlate with the sg blind judging results and thus could serve as a predictor of RV quality. SECREF Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300310001-4
awe ; ane” ¢ gee Approved For-Raléase 2000/08/07 : Giprppesogrs2R001200310001% er Se we WHY From these summations, the percent PT is calculated from Oo ou ot » U HO! ae we DERINED %PT = No.(PT) / [No.(PT) + No. (DB) ] ee (1) DEAT MERA « SS where No.(PT) and No.(DB) are the number of PT and DB concepts, respectively. AGAINST It must be noted the %PT can be calculated without any knowledge of the target, 3. Target-Dependent Analysis IPE Following an idea first proposed by Targ et al.,° a detailed ANALY, target-dependent analysis was devised. With a response conceptualized in accordance with the above guidelines, the target-dependent analysis proceeds in three steps: ELEMELITS (1) Binary determination--Each concept is assigned a one if peESEDT some element in the target appears to correspond to the concept in question, The concept is assigned a zero otherwise. There is no implied evaluation at this point, but if there is a correspondence, the identified element must be explicitly noted, (2) Quality evaluation-~A quality evaluation is made for ASS VAWE each concept that has been assigned a one from Step (1) CEST above, The evaluation is made on a one-to-five-point scale shown in Table l. (3) Centrality evaluation--Each concept that has been assigned ASSL VALLE ‘“S a one from Step (1) above is also evaluated with respect to FoR ELE < 4, the centrality of the corresponding target element, PRESENT “A Centrality is expressed as a number between one and five % a (Table 2). This numeric assignment is made according to the element's importance to the target as a whole and is based on target information only. The scores from these three steps are then multiplied together to form a composite score (maximum of 25) for each concept in each response. Appendix B is a complete example of this procedure for one of the three responses, i.e., for which the target was a small rag doll (Figure 1). 9 SECRET Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001300310001-4