---
title: "A Reactive Approach to Explanation"
authors:
  - "Johanna D. Moore"
  - "William R. Swartout"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1989/240"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1989/0240.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Eleventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1989
pages: "1504-1509"
track: "Speech and Natural Language"
keywords:
---

# A Reactive Approach to Explanation

Johanna D. Moore, William R. Swartout

*Proceedings of the Eleventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 1504-1509.

## Abstract

Explanation is an interactive process, requiring a dialogue between advice-giver and adviceseeker. Yet current expert systems cannot participate in a dialogue with users . In particular these systems cannot clarify misunderstood explanations, elaborate on previous explanations, or respond to follow-up questions in the context of the on-going dialogue. In this paper, we describe a reactive approach to explanation - one that can participate in an on-going dialogue and employs feedback from the user to guide subsequent explanations . Our system plans explanations from a rich set of explanation strategies, recording the system's discourse goals, the plans used to achieve them, and any assumptions made while planning a response . This record provides the dialogue context the system needs to respond appropriately to the user's feedback . We illustrate our approach with examples of disambiguating a follow-up question and producing a clarifying elaboration in response to a misunderstood explanation .