Learning cognitive embedding using signed knowledge interaction graph

Measuring learner cognition based on their problem-solving performance is a joint discipline of cognitive psychology and machine learning. In the case of learner problem-solving, the interaction between learner and knowledge forms a typical type of signed interaction graph. Interaction graphs are a widely used and effective solution to model the relationships between interacting entities. However, most of previous interaction graph methods are inclined to the observed interactions as positive links but they often fail to consider unobserved and negative links, which leads to an insufficiency in capturing the complete cognition/mis-cognition proximity information. To address this limitation, we propose a knowledge graph representation learning method that is based on signed knowledge interaction network (SKIN). We explicitly model the correct/incorrect cognitive performance as the positively +/negatively − signed links in the graph. The model simultaneously measures the nodes’ local and global proximity, and then preserves them in the learned knowledge embedding. We architect a pairwise neural network that is based on a tri-sampling strategy and a sign-driven distance measuring objective function. The network generates knowledge representations by maximizing the knowledge distance between oppositely-signed pairs and minimizing the distance between identically-signed pairs. Our experimental results show the learned knowledge embedding demonstrates a desired Euclidean property and can be visualized with clear classification boundaries. We also show it can power downstream tasks such as learner-performance-prediction. The learned embeddings generate promising prediction scores on this task when compared to several methods in network sign prediction and learner-performance-prediction.