Virtual mental space: Interacting with the characters of works of literature

Abstract

We are building the software implementation of a virtual mental space: its inhabitants interact with the literature characters by asking questions in natural language. The players are encouraged to inquiry about intentions and desires, knowledge and beliefs, pretending and deceiving of the literature characters. Works of literature are identified based on the patterns of mental interaction between the characters. Reasoning about mental states and natural language processing with the semantic focus are the techniques required to implement the literature search component of the virtual mental world.