An Investigation of Argumentation Framework Characteristics

We investigate the relationship between the structural properties of argumentation frameworks and their argument-based characteristics, examining the characteristics of structures of Dung-style frameworks and two generalisations: extended argumentation frameworks and collective-attack frameworks. Our results show that the structural properties of frameworks have an impact on the size of extensions produced, on the proportion of subsets of arguments that determine some topic argument to be acceptable, and on the likelihood that the addition of some new argument will affect the acceptability of an existing argument, all characteristics that are known to affect the performance of argumentation-based technologies. We demonstrate the applicability of our results with two case studies.