new book on semantic cognition

[Geoffrey Hinton]

There is a nice new book showing that distributed representations in
connectionist networks can explain a lot of psychological data:

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Semantic Cognition
A Parallel Distributed Processing Approach

Timothy T. Rogers and James L. McClelland

http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262182394/

This groundbreaking monograph offers a mechanistic theory of the
representation and use of semantic knowledge, integrating the
strengths and overcoming many of the weaknesses of hierarchical,
categorization-based approaches, similarity-based approaches, and the
approach often called "theory theory."  Building on earlier models by
Geoffrey Hinton in the 1980s and David Rumelhart in the early 1990s,
the authors propose that performance in semantic tasks arises through
the propagation of graded signals in a system of interconnected
processing units. The representations used in performing these tasks
are patterns of activation across units, governed by weighted
connections among them. Semantic knowledge is acquired through the
gradual adjustment of the strengths of these connections in the course
of day-to-day experience.

The authors show how a simple computational model proposed by
Rumelhart exhibits a progressive differentiation of conceptual
knowledge, paralleling aspects of cognitive development seen in the
work of Frank Keil and Jean Mandler. The authors extend the model to
address aspects of conceptual knowledge acquisition in infancy,
disintegration of conceptual knowledge in dementia, "basic-level"
effects and their interaction with expertise, and many findings
introduced to support the idea that semantic cognition is guided by
naive, domain-specific theories.