LOCALIST CONNECTIONISM: BBS Call for Commentators

Fri Jul 9 13:00:58 EDT 1999

    Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article

        CONNECTIONIST MODELLING IN PSYCHOLOGY:
        A LOCALIST MANIFESTO

    by Mike Page

    *** please see also 5 important announcements about new BBS
    policies and address change at the bottom of this message) ***

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please reply by EMAIL by July 21st to:

    bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk

      or write to [PLEASE NOTE SLIGHTLY CHANGED ADDRESS]:

    Behavioral and Brain Sciences
    ECS: New Zepler Building
    University of Southampton
    Highfield, Southampton
    SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/

If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a
BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is
familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and
commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates.

To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection
at BBS's Princeton or Southampton Website.

_____________________________________________________________

    CONNECTIONIST MODELLING IN PSYCHOLOGY:
    A  LOCALIST MANIFESTO            

    Mike Page           
    Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit,
    15, Chaucer Rd.,
    Cambridge, CB2 2EF, U.K.
    mike.page at mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk
    http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/ 

    ABSTRACT: Over the last decade, fully-distributed models have become
    dominant in connectionist psychological modelling, whereas the virtues
    of localist models have been underestimated. This target article
    illustrates some of the benefits of localist modelling. Localist models
    are characterized by the presence of localist representations rather
    than the absence of distributed representations. A generalized localist
    model is proposed that exhibits many of the properties of fully
    distributed models.  It can be applied to a number of problems that are
    difficult for fully distributed models and its applicability can be
    extended through comparisons with a number of classic mathematical
    models of behaviour.  There are reasons why localist models have been
    underused and thes e are addressed. In particular, many conclusions
    about connectionist representation, based on neuroscientific
    observation, are called into question. There are still some problems
    inherent in the application of fully distributed systems and some
    inadequacies in proposed solutions to these problems. In the domain of
    psychological modelling, localist modelling is to be preferred.

    KEYWORDS: connectionist modelling, neural networks, localist,
    distributed, competition, choice, reaction-time, consolidation.

___________________________________________________________

To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide
Web at the US or UK BBS Archive. Please do not prepare a commentary on
this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant
expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the
article.

The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.page.html

____________________________________________________________

         ***  FIVE IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS  ***

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(1) There have been some very important developments in the 
    area of Web archiving of scientific papers very recently.
    Please see:

Science:
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/science.html
Nature:
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature.html
American Scientist:
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/amlet.html
Chronicle of Higher Education:
           http://www.chronicle.com/free/v45/i04/04a02901.htm

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(2) All authors in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences are
    strongly encouraged to archive all their papers (on their
    Home-Servers as well as) on CogPrints:

http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/

    It is extremely simple to do so and will make all of our papers
    available to all of us everywhere at no cost to anyone.

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(3) BBS has a new policy of accepting submissions electronically.

    Authors can specify whether they would like their submissions
    archived publicly during refereeing in the BBS under-refereeing
    Archive, or in a referees-only, non-public archive.

    Upon acceptance, preprints of final drafts are moved to the
    public BBS Archive:

ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/index.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/

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(4) BBS has expanded its annual page quota and is now appearing
    bimonthly, so the service of Open Peer Commentary can now be be
    offered to more target articles. The BBS refereeing procedure is
    also going to be considerably faster with the new electronic
    submission and processing procedures. Authors are invited to submit
    papers to:

    Email:   bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk

    Web:     http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk
             http://bbs.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/

    INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS:

http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html      

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(5) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review

    In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) journal had only
    been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because
    of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota
    will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we
    treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
    biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
    would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.

    (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
    basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
    indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
    nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
    potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
    impact!).