No subject

[Bob Allen]

Subject: Report Available

Sequential Connectionist Networks
for Answering Simple Questions about a Microworld*#

Robert B. Allen
2A-367
Morristown, NJ 07960-1910
rba at bellocre.com

Sequential  back-propagation  networks  were  trained  to  answer
simple  questions  about  objects  in a microworld.  The networks
transferred the ability  to  answer  this  type  of  question  to
patterns  on  which  they  had  not  been trained.  Moreover, the
networks were shown to  have  developed  expectations  about  the
objects  even  when  they  were not present in the microworld.  A
variety of architectures were tested using this paradigm and  the
addition  of  channel-specific hidden layers was found to improve
performance.  Overall, these results are directed to the approach
of  building  language  users with connectionist networks, rather
than language processors.

*To appear in Proceedings Cognitive Science Society, 1988.
#Not to be confused with HIMOSTHYLEDYNE of the previous message,
this work introduces hierarchical sequential networks (HSN).