Related Explanations in Formal Argumentation, an Empirical Study

In formal argumentation theory, multiple argumentation-based explanation methods have been formulated based on ideas from social and cognitive science. However, these have not yet been empirically validated. One such idea is that information in an explanation needs to be related; in argumentation-based explanations, this has been captured as there being an attack path between arguments. This study describes and empirically validates two types of relatedness, related admissibility and directly related admissibility. This was done by instructing participants to select arguments from an argumentation framework to explain another argument in this framework. These explanations selected by the participants were compared to argumentation-based explanations that use relatedness. We found that both forms of relatedness are cognitively plausible. This gives insight into how argumentation theory can be applied in the real world to provide explanations.