Conceptual and terminological systems are established and maintained by the communities
who use them. This paper reports experiments which investigate the role of communication
and interaction in the process. The experiments show that isolated pairs of communicators
and virtual communities of interacting pairs naturally converge on their own conceptual
and terminological systems when confronted with a common task. The results also indicate
that the system converged on is optimal for that particular group engaged in that
particular task. These findings are discussed in relation to the increasing use of
tightly coordinated medical teams and its implications for getting them to adopt standardized
medical terminologies.
Keywords
Concepts - Medical Terminology - Communication
