{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,13]],"date-time":"2026-04-13T20:57:42Z","timestamp":1776113862769,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":37,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,29]],"date-time":"2023-01-29T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1674950400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100006221","name":"US-Israel Binational Science Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["2021040"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2021040"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100006221","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["BDCC"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Question-asking is a critical aspect of human communications. Yet, little is known about the reasons that lead people to ask questions, which questions are considered better than others, or what cognitive mechanisms allow the ability to ask informative questions. Here, we take a first step towards investigating human question-asking. We do so by an exploratory data-driven analysis of the questions asked by Akinator, a popular online game of a genie who asks questions to guess the character that the user is thinking of. We propose that the Akinator\u2019s question-asking process may be viewed as a reflection of how humans ask questions. We conduct an exploratory data analysis to examine different strategies for the Akinator\u2019s question-asking process, ranging from mathematical algorithms to gamification-based considerations, by analyzing complete games and individual questions. Furthermore, we use topic-modelling techniques to explore the topics of the Akinator\u2019s inquiries and map similar questions into clusters. Overall, we find surprising aspects of the specificity and types of questions generated by the Akinator game, that may be driven by the gamification characteristics of the game. In addition, we find coherent topics that the Akinator retrieves from when generating questions. Our results highlight commonalities in the strategies for question-asking used by people and by the Akinator.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/bdcc7010026","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,30]],"date-time":"2023-01-30T04:58:25Z","timestamp":1675054705000},"page":"26","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":11,"title":["A Mirror to Human Question Asking: Analyzing the Akinator Online Question Game"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"7","author":[{"given":"Gal","family":"Sasson","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences, Technion\u2014Israel Institute of Technology, 3200003 Haifa, Israel"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3872-7689","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Yoed N.","family":"Kenett","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences, Technion\u2014Israel Institute of Technology, 3200003 Haifa, Israel"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2023,1,29]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"103966","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cognition.2019.05.003","article-title":"Effects of explanation on children\u2019s question asking","volume":"191","author":"Ruggeri","year":"2019","journal-title":"Cognition"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"101082","DOI":"10.1016\/j.cogdev.2021.101082","article-title":"What is a good question asker better at? 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