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Open AccessArticle
Enhancing Rule-Based Explanations via Cognitive Bias Towards Semantic Relevance
by
Parisa Mahya
Parisa Mahya 1,*
and
Johannes Fürnkranz
Johannes Fürnkranz 1,2
1
Institute for Application-Oriented Knowledge Processing (FAW), Johannes Kepler University, 4040 Linz, Austria
2
LIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, Johannes Kepler University, 4040 Linz, Austria
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Information 2026, 17(9), 919; https://doi.org/10.3390/info17090919 (registering DOI)
Submission received: 17 August 2026
/
Revised: 16 September 2026
/
Accepted: 17 September 2026
/
Published: 19 September 2026
Abstract
As interest in explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) continues to grow, a critical gap remains between the explanations generated by models and their interpretability by human users, particularly when cognitive biases and semantic relevance are not adequately addressed. This paper introduces CoRIfEE-Rel, a novel human-centered meta-XAI method aimed at bridging this gap by producing rule-based explanations that are both interpretable and semantically aligned with the target domain concept. CoRIfEE-Rel synthesizes outputs from a diverse pool of interpretable models and employs a knowledge graph-driven heuristic that combines semantic relevance with traditional rule learning metrics. This approach ensures that the resulting explanations are deeply tied to core domain concepts while maintaining the clarity and structure needed for human understanding. Empirical evaluations conducted across multiple datasets demonstrate that CoRIfEE-Rel achieves higher semantic relevance than random forest and JRip rule-based explanations without notable compromises in predictive accuracy. The results highlight the ability of CoRIfEE-Rel to generate rule-based explanations that are semantically related to the target concepts while maintaining predictive performance.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Mahya, P.; Fürnkranz, J.
Enhancing Rule-Based Explanations via Cognitive Bias Towards Semantic Relevance. Information 2026, 17, 919.
https://doi.org/10.3390/info17090919
AMA Style
Mahya P, Fürnkranz J.
Enhancing Rule-Based Explanations via Cognitive Bias Towards Semantic Relevance. Information. 2026; 17(9):919.
https://doi.org/10.3390/info17090919
Chicago/Turabian Style
Mahya, Parisa, and Johannes Fürnkranz.
2026. "Enhancing Rule-Based Explanations via Cognitive Bias Towards Semantic Relevance" Information 17, no. 9: 919.
https://doi.org/10.3390/info17090919
APA Style
Mahya, P., & Fürnkranz, J.
(2026). Enhancing Rule-Based Explanations via Cognitive Bias Towards Semantic Relevance. Information, 17(9), 919.
https://doi.org/10.3390/info17090919
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