In Mark Johnson (Ed.), Brain Development and Cognition: A Reader.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. 1993. Pp. 623-642.
CONNECTIONISM AND THE STUDY OF CHANGE
Elizabeth A. Bates
Jeffrey L. Elman
University of California, San Diego
Developmental psychology and developmental neuropsychology
have traditionally focussed on the study of children. But these two fields
are also supposed to be about the study of change, i.e., changes in behavior,
changes in the neural structures that underlie behavior, and changes in
the relationship between mind and brain across the course of development.
Ironically, there has been relatively little interest in the mechanisms
responsible for change in the last 15 - 20 years of developmental research.
The reasons for this de-emphasis on change have a great deal to do with
a metaphor for mind and brain that has influenced most of experimental psychology,
cognitive science and neuropsychology for the last few decades, i.e., the
metaphor of the serial digital computer. We will refer to this particular
framework for the study of mind as the First Computer Metaphor, to be contrasted
with a new computer metaphor, variously known as connectionism, parallel
distributing processing, and/or neural networks. In this brief chapter,
we will argue that the First Computer Metaphor has had some particularly
unhappy consequences for the study of mental and neural development. By
contrast, the Second Computer Metaphor (despite its current and no doubt
future limitations) offers some compelling advantages for the study of change,
at both the mental and the neural level.
The chapter is organized as follows: (1) a brief discussion
of the way that change has (or has not) been treated in the last decade
of research in developmental psychology, (2) a discussion of the First Computer
Metaphor, and its implications for developmental research, (3) an introduction
to the Second Computer Metaphor, and the promise it offers for research
on the development of mind and brain, ending with (4) a response to some
common misconceptions about connectionism.
(1) What Happened to the Study of Change?
Traditionally, there are three terms that have been used
to describe changes in child behavior over time: maturation, learning, and
development. For our purposes here, these terms can be defined as follows.
(a) Maturation. As the term is typically used in
the psychological literature (although this use may not be entirely accurate
from a biological perspective), ``maturation'' refers to the timely appearance
or unfolding of behaviors that are predetermined, in their structure and
their sequence, by a well-defined genetic program. The role of experience
in a strong maturational theory is limited to a ``triggering'' function
(providing the general or specific conditions that allow some predetermined
structures to emerge) or a ``blocking'' function (providing conditions that
inhibit the expression of some predetermined event). The environment does
not, in and of itself, provide or cause behavioral structure.
(b) Learning. ``Learning'' is typically defined
as a systematic change in behavior as a result of experience. Under some
interpretations, learning refers to a copying or transfer of structure from
the environment to the organism (as in ``acquisition'' or ``internalization'').
Under a somewhat weaker interpretation, learning may refer to a shaping
or alteration of behavior that is caused by experience, although the resulting
behavior does not resemble structures in the environment in any direct or
interesting way.
(c) Development. As defined by Werner (1948) in
his elaboration of the ``orthogenetic principle'', ``development'' refers
to any positive change in the internal structure of a system, where ``positive''
is further defined as an increase in the number of internal parts (i.e.,
differentiation), accompanied by an increase in the amount of organization
that holds among those parts. Under this definition, the term ``development''
is neutral to the genetic or experiential sources of change, and may include
emergent forms that are not directly predictable from genes or experience
considered separately (i.e., the sum is greater than and qualitatively different
from the parts).
Although all three terms have been used to describe behavioral
change in the psychological literature, the most difficult and (in our view)
most interesting proposals are the ones that have involved emergent form,
i.e., changes that are only indirectly related to structure in the genes
or the environment. We are referring here not to the banal interactionism
in which black and white yield grey, but to a much more challenging interactionism
in which black and white converge and interact to yield an unexpected red.
Because this interactionist view appears to be the only way to explain how
new structures arise, it may be our only way out of a fruitless Nature/Nurture
debate that has hampered progress in developmental psychology for most of
its history.
Within our field, the most complete interactionist theory
of behavioral change to date is the theory offered by Jean Piaget, across
a career that spanned more than fifty years (Piaget, 1952, 1970a, 1970b,
1971). Piaget's genetic epistemology concentrated on the way that new mental
structures emerge at the interface between an active child and a structured
world. The key mechanism for change in Piaget's theory is the consummate
biological notion of adaptation. Starting with a restricted set of sensorimotor
schemes (i.e., structured ``packages'' of perception and action that permit
activities like sucking, reaching, tracking, and/or grasping), the child
begins to act upon the world (assimilation). Actions are modified in response
to feedback from that world (accommodation), and in response to the degree
of internal coherence or stability that action schemes bear to one another
(reciprocal assimilation). The proximal cause that brings about adaptation
is a rather poorly defined notion of equilibration, i.e., the re-establishment
of a stable and coherent state after a perturbation that created instability
or disequilibrium. In the infant years, adaptation of simple sensorimotor
schemes to a structured world leads to an increasingly complex and integrated
set of schemes or ``plans'', structures that eventually permit the child
to ``re-present'' the world (i.e., to call potential perceptuo-motor schemes
associated with a given object or event into an organized state-of-readiness,
in the absence of direct perceptual input from the represented object or
event). This developmental notion of representation comprised Piaget's explanation
for the appearance of mental imagery, language and other symbolic or representational
forms somewhere in the second year of life. After this point, the process
of adaptation continues at both the physical and representation level (i.e.,
operations on the real world, and operations on the new ``mental world''),
passing through a series of semi-stable ``stages'' or moments of system-wide
equilibrium, ultimately leading to our human capacity for higher forms of
logical and reasoning.
This ``bootstrapping'' approach to cognitive development
does involve a weak form of learning (as defined above), but the mental
structures that characterize each stage of development are not predictable
in any direct way from either the structure of the world or the set of innate
sensorimotor schemes with which the child began. Furthermore, Piaget insisted
that these progressive increases in complexity were a result of activity
(``construction''), and not a gradual unfolding of predetermined forms (maturation).
In this fashion, Piaget strove to save us from the Nature/Nurture dilemma.
Behavioral outcomes were determined not only by genes, or by environment,
but by the mathematical, physical and biological laws that determine the
kinds of solutions that are possible for any given problem. As Piaget once
stated in a criticism of his American colleague Noam Chomsky, ``That which
is inevitable does not have to be innate'' (Piaget, 1970a).
There was a period in the history of developmental psychology
in which Piagetian theory assumed a degree of orthodoxy that many found
stifling. Decades later, it now appears that much of Piaget's theory was
wrong in detail. For one thing, it is now clear that the infant's initial
stock of innate sensorimotor schemes is far richer than Piaget believed.
It is also clear that Piaget overestimated the degree of cross-domain stability
that children are likely to display at any given point in development (i.e.,
the notion of a coherent ``stage''). Once the details of his stage theory
were proven inadequate, all that really remained were the principles of
change that formed the bedrock of Piaget's genetic epistemology -- notions
of adaptation and equilibration that struck many of his critics as hopelessly
vague, and a notion of emergent form that many found downright mystical.
Piaget was aware of these problems, and spent the latter part of his career
seeking a set of formalisms to concretize his deep insights about change.
Most critics agree that these efforts failed. This failure, coupled with
new empirical information showing that many other aspects of the theory
were incorrect, has led to a widespread repudiation of Piaget. Indeed, we
are in a period of ``anti-Piagetianism'' of patricidal dimensions.
But what have we put in Piaget's place? We have never
replaced his theory with a better account of the epistemology of change.
In fact, the most influential developmental movements of the last two decades
have essentially disavowed change. Alas, we fear that we are back on the
horns of the Nature-Nurture dilemma from which Piaget tried in vain to save
us.
On the one hand, we have seen a series of strong nativist
proposals in the last few years, including proposals by some neo-Gibsonian
theorists within the so-called ``competent infant movement'' (Baillargeon
& deVos, 1991; Spelke, 1990, 1991), and proposals within language acquisition
inspired by Chomsky's approach to the nature and origins of grammar (Hyams,
1986; Roeper & Williams, 1987; Lightfoot, 1991). In both these movements,
it is assumed that the essence of what it means to be human is genetically
predetermined. Change -- insofar as we see change at all -- is attributed
to the maturation of predetermined mental content, to the release of preformed
material by an environmental ``trigger'', and/or to the gradual removal
of banal sensory and motor limitations that hid all this complex innate
knowledge from view. Indeed, the term ``learning'' has taken on such negative
connotations in some quarters that efforts are underway to eliminate it
altogether. The following quotes from Piatelli-Palmerini (1989) illustrate
how far things have gone:
I, for one, see no advantage in the preservation
of the term learning. We agree with those who maintain that we would gain
in clarity if the scientific use of the term were simply discontinued. (p.
2)
Problem-solving...adaptation, simplicity, compensation,
equilibration, minimal disturbance and all those universal, parsimony-driven
forces of which the natural sciences are so fond, recede into the background.
They are either scaled down, at the physico-chemical level, where they still
make a lot of sense, or dismissed altogether. (pp. 13-14).
On the other hand, the neo-Vygotskian movement and associated
approaches to the social bases of cognition have provided us with another
form of preformationalism, insisting that the essence of what it means to
be human is laid out for the child in the structure of social interactions
(Bruner & Sherwood, 1976; Rogoff, 1990). In these theories, change is
viewed primarily as a process of internalization, as the child takes in
preformed solutions to problems that lie in the ``zone of proximal development'',
i.e., in joint activities that are just outside his current ability to act
alone. Related ideas are often found in research on ``motherese'', i.e.,
on the special, simplified and caricatured form of language that adults
direct to small children (for a review, see Ferguson & Snow, 1978).
In citing these examples, we do not want to deny that society has an influence
on development, because we are quite sure that it does. Our point is, simply,
that the pendulum has swung too far from the study of child-initiated change.
The most influential movements in developmental psychology for the last
two decades are those that have deemphasized change in favor of an emphasis
on some kind of preformation: either a preformation by Nature and the hand
of God, or a preformation by the competent adult.
Why have we accepted these limits? Why haven't we moved
on to study the process by which new structures really do emerge? We believe
that developmental psychology has been influenced for many years by a metaphor
for mind in which it is difficult to think about change in any interesting
form -- which brings us to the First Computer Metaphor.
(2) The First Computer Metaphor and its Implications for Development
At its core, the serial digital computer is a machine that
manipulates symbols. It takes individual symbols (or strings of symbols)
as its input, applies a set of stored algorithms (a program) to that input,
and produces more symbols (or strings of symbols) as its output. These steps
are performed one at a time (albeit very quickly) by a central processor.
Because of this serial constraint, problems to be solved by the First Computer
must be broken down into a hierarchical structure that permits the machine
to reach solutions with maximum efficiency (e.g., moving down a decision
tree until a particular subproblem is solved, and then back up again to
the next step in the program).
Without question, exploitation of this machine has led
to huge advances in virtually every area of science, industry and education.
After all, computers can do things that human beings simply cannot do, permitting
quantitative advances in information processing and numerical analysis that
were unthinkable a century ago. The problem with this device for our purposes
here lies not in its utility as a scientific tool, but in its utility as
a scientific metaphor, in particular as a metaphor for the human mind/brain.
Four properties of the serial digital computer have had particularly unfortunate
consequences for the way that we have come to think about mental and neural
development.
(1) Discrete representations. The symbols that are
manipulated by a serial digital computer are discrete entities. That is,
they either are or are not present in the input. There is no such thing
as 50% of the letter A or 99% of the number 7. For example, if a would-be
user types in a password that is off by only one key-stroke, the computer
does not respond with ``What the heck, that's close enough.'' Instead, the
user is damned just as thoroughly as he would be if he did not know the
password at all.
People (particularly children) rarely behave like this.
We can respond to partial information (degraded input) in a systematic way;
and we often transform our inputs (systematic or not) into partial decisions
and imperfect acts (degraded output). We are error-prone, but we are also
forgiving, flexible, willing and able to make the best of what we have.
This mismatch between human behavior and the representations manipulated
by serial digital computers has of course been known for some time. To resolve
this well-known discrepancy, the usual device adopted by proponents of the
First Computer Metaphor for Mind is the competence/performance distinction.
That is, it is argued that our knowledge (competence) takes a discrete and
idealized form that is compatible with the computer metaphor, but our behavior
(performance) is degraded by processing factors and other sources of noise
that are irrelevant to a characterization of knowledge and (by extension)
acquisition of knowledge. This is a perfectly reasonable intellectual move,
but as we will see in more detail below, it has led to certain difficulties
in characterizing the nature of learning that often result in the statement
that learning is impossible.
(2) Absolute rules. Like the symbolic representations
described above, the algorithms contained in a computer program also take
a discrete form. If the discrete symbols that trigger a given rule are present
in the input, then that rule must apply, and give an equally discrete symbol
or string of symbols as its output. Conversely, if the relevant symbols
are not present in the input, then the rule in question will not apply.
There is no room for anything in between, no coherent way of talking about
50% of a rule, or (for that matter) weak vs. strong rules. Indeed, this
is exactly the reason why computers are so much more reliable than human
beings for many computational purposes.
Presented with the well-known mismatch between human behavior
and the absolute status of rules in a serial digital computer, proponents
of the First Computer Metaphor for Mind usually resort to the same competence/performance
described above. Alternatively, there have been attempts to model the probabilistic
nature of human behavior by adding weights to rules, a device that permits
the model to decide which rule to apply (or in what order of preference)
when a choice has to be made. The problem is that these weights are in no
way a natural product or property of the architecture in which they are
embedded, nor are they produced automatically by the learning process. Instead,
these weights are arbitrary, ad hoc devices that must be placed in the system
by hand -- which brings us to the next point.
(3) Learning as programming. The serial digital
computer is not a self-organizing system. It does not learn easily. Indeed,
the easiest metaphor for learning in a system of this kind is programming;
that is, the rules that must be applied to inputs of some kind are placed
directly into the system -- by man, by Nature or by the hand of God. To
be sure, there is a literature on computer learning in the field of artificial
intelligence. However, most of these efforts are based on a process of hypothesis
testing. In such learning models, two essential factors are provided a priori:
a set of hypotheses that will be tested against the data, and an algorithm
for deciding which hypothesis provides the best fit to those data. This
is by its very nature a strong nativist approach to learning. It is not
surprising that learning theories of this kind are regularly invoked by
linguists and psycholinguists with a strong nativist orientation. There
is no graceful way for the system to derive new hypotheses (as opposed to
modifications of a pre-existing option). Everything that really counts is
already there at the beginning.
Once again, however, we have an unfortunate mismatch between
theory and data in cognitive science. Because the hypotheses tested by a
traditional computer learning model are discrete in nature (based on the
rule and representations described above), learning (a.k.a. ``selection'')
necessarily involves a series of discrete decisions about the truth or falsity
of each hypothesis. Hence we would expect change to take place in a crisp,
step-wise fashion, as decisions are made, hypotheses are discarded, and
new ones are put in their place. But human learning rarely proceeds in this
fashion, characterized more often by error, vacillation and backsliding.
In fact, the limited value of the serial digital computer as a metaphor
for learning is well known. Perhaps for this reason, learning and development
have receded into the background in modern cognitive psychology, while the
field has concentrated instead on issues like the nature of representation,
processes of recognition and retrieval, and the various stages through which
discrete bits of information are processed (e.g., various buffers and checkpoints
in a serial process of symbol manipulation). Developmental psychologists
working within this framework (or indirectly influenced by it) have moved
away from the study of change and self-organization toward a catalogue of
those representations that are there at the beginning (e.g., the ``competent
infant'' movement in cognition and perception; the parameter-setting movement
in developmental psycholinguistics ), and/or a characterization of how the
processes that elaborate information mature or expand across the childhood
years (i.e., changes in performance that ``release'' the expression of pre-existing
knowledge).
4) The hardware/software distinction. One of the
most unfortunate consequences of the First Computer Metaphor for cognitive
science in general and developmental psychology in particular has been the
acceptance of a strong separation between software (the knowledge -- symbols,
rules, hypotheses, etc. -- that is contained in a program) and hardware
(the machine that is used to implement that program). From this perspective,
the machine itself places very few constraints on our theory of knowledge
and (by extension) behavior, except perhaps for some relatively banal concerns
about capacity (e.g., there are some programs that one simply cannot run
on a small personal computer with limited memory).
The distinction between hardware and software has provided
much of the ammunition for an approach to philosophy of mind and cognitive
science called Functionalism (Fodor, 1981; See Footnote 1). Within the functionalist
school, the essential properties of mind are derived entirely from the domains
on which the mind must operate: language, logic, mathematics, three-dimensional
space, etc. To be sure, these properties have to be implemented in a machine
of some kind, but the machine itself does not place interesting constraints
on mental representations (i.e., the objects manipulated by the mind) or
functional architecture (i.e., the abstract system that manipulates those
objects). This belief has justified an approach to cognition that is entirely
independent of neuroscience, thereby reducing the number and range of constraints
to which our cognitive theories must respond. As a by-product (since divorces
usually affect both parties), this approach has also reduced the impact
of cognitive theories and cognitive phenomena on the field of neuroscience.
The separation between biology and cognition has had particularly
serious consequences for developmental psychology, a field in which biology
has traditionally played a major role (i.e., a tradition that includes Freud,
Gesell, Baldwin, and Piaget, to name a few). Not only have we turned away
from our traditional emphasis on change, but we have also turned away from
the healthy and regular use of biological constraints on the study of developing
minds. Ironically, some of the strongest claims about innateness in the
current literature have been put forth in complete disregard of biological
facts. Very rich forms of object perception and deep inferences about three-dimensional
space are ascribed to infants before 3 - 4 months of age, conclusions which
are difficult to square with (for example) well-known limitations on visual
acuity and/or the immaturity of higher cortical regions in that age range.
The underlying assumption appears to be that our cognitive findings have
priority, and if there is a mismatch between cognitive and biological conclusions,
we probably got the biology wrong (which may be the case some of the time
-- but surely not all the time!).
It seems to us that we need all the constraints that can
be found to make sense of a growing mass of information about cognitive
development, language development, perceptual development, social development.
Furthermore, we suspect that developmental neuroscience would also profit
from a healthy dose of knowledge about the behavioral functions of the neural
systems under study. Finally, we would all be better off if we could find
a computational model (or class of models) in which it would be easier to
organize and study the mutual constraints that hold between mental and neural
development -- which brings us to the next computer metaphor.
(3) The Second Computer Metaphor and Its Implications for Development
During the 1950's and 60's, when the First Computer Metaphor
for mind began to influence psychological research, some information scientists
were exploring the properties of a different and competing computational
device called the Perceptron (Rosenblatt, 1958, 1962). The roots of this
approach can be traced to earlier work in cybernetics (Minsky, 1956; von
Neumann, 1951, 1958) and in neurophysiology (Eccles, 1953; Hebb, 1949; McCulloch
& Pitts, 1943). In a perceptron network, unlike the serial digital computer,
there was not a clear distinction between processor and memory, nor did
it operate on symbols in the usual sense of the term. Instead, the perceptron
network was composed of a large number of relatively simple ``local'' units
that worked in parallel to perceive, recognize and/or categorize an input.
These local units or ``nodes'' were organized into two layers, an ``input
set'' and an ``output set''. In the typical perceptron architecture, every
unit on the input layer was connected by a single link to each and every
unit on the output layer (see Figure 1). These connections varied in degree
or strength, from 0 to 1 (in a purely excitatory system) or from -1 to +1
(in a system with both activation and inhibition). A given output unit would
``fire'' as a function of the amount of input that it received from the
various input units, with activation collected until a critical firing threshold
was reached (see also McCulloch and Pitts, 1943). Individual acts of recognition
or categorization in a Perceptron reflect the collective activity of all
these units. Knowledge is a property of the connection strengths that hold
between the respective input and output layers; the machine can be said
to ``know'' a pattern when it gives the correct output for a given class
of inputs (including novel members of the input class that it has never
seen before, i.e., generalization).
Figure 1. A simple perceptron network.
There are some obvious analogies between this system
and the form of computation carried out in real neural systems, e.g., excitatory
and inhibitory links, summation of activation, firing thresholds, and above
all the distribution of patterns across a large number of inter-connected
units. But this was not the only advantage that perceptrons offered, compared
with their competitors. The most important property of perceptrons was (and
is) their ability to learn by example.
During the teaching and learning phase, a stimulus is registered
on the input layer in a distributed fashion, by turning units on or off
to varying degrees. The system produces the output that it currently prefers
(based, in the most extreme tabula rasa case, on a random set of connections).
Each unit in this distributed but ``ignorant'' output is then compared with
the corresponding unit in the ``correct'' output. If a given output unit
within a distributed pattern has ``the right answer'', its connection strengths
are left unchanged. If a given output has ``the wrong answer'', the size
of the error is calculated by a simple difference score (i.e., ``delta'').
All of the connections to that erroneous output are then increased or decreased
in proportion to the amount of error that they were responsible for on that
trial. This procedure then continues in a similar fashion for other trials.
Because the network is required to find a single set of connection weights
which allow it to respond correctly to all of the patterns it has seen,
it typically succeeds only by discovering the underlying generalizations
which relate inputs to outputs. The important and interesting result is
that the network is then able to respond appropriately not only to stimuli
it has seen before, but to novel stimuli as well. The learning procedure
is thus an example of learning inductively.
Compared with the cumbersome hypothesis-testing procedures
that constitute learning in serial digital computers, learning really appears
to be a natural property of the perceptron. Indeed, perceptrons are able
to master a broad range of patterns, with realistic generalization to new
inputs as a function of their similarity to the initial learning set. The
initial success of these artificial systems had some impact on theories
of pattern recognition in humans. The most noteworthy example is Selfridge's
``Pandemonium Model'' (Selfridge, 1958), in which simple local feature detectors
or ``demons'' work in parallel to recognize a complex pattern. Each demon
scans the input for evidence of its preferred feature; depending on its
degree of certainty that the relevant feature has appeared, each demon ``shouts''
or ``whispers'' its results. In the Pandemonium Model (as in the Perceptron),
there is no final arbiter, no homunculus or central executive who puts all
these daemonical inputs together. Rather, the ``solution'' is an emergent
property of the system as a whole, a global pattern produced by independent,
local computations. This also means that results or solutions can vary in
their degree of resemblance to the ``right'' answer, capturing the rather
fuzzy properties of human categorization that are so elusive in psychological
models inspired by the serial digital computer.
So far so good. And yet this promising line of research
came to a virtual end in 1969, when Minsky and Papert published their famous
book Perceptrons. Minsky and Papert (who were initial enthusiasts and pioneers
in perceptron research) were able to prove that perceptrons are only capable
of learning a limited class of first-order, linearly separable patterns.
These systems are incapable of learning second-order relations like ``A
or B but not both'' (i.e., logical exclusive OR), and by extension, any
pattern of equivalent or greater complexity and inter-dependence. This fatal
flaw is a direct product of the fact that perceptrons are two-layered systems,
with a single direct link between each input and output unit. If A and B
are both ``on'' in the input layer, then they each automatically ``turn
on'' their collaborators on the output layer. There is simply no place in
the system to record the fact that A and B are both on simultaneously, and
hence no way to ``warn'' their various collaborators that they should shut
up on this particular trial. It was clear even in 1969 that this problem
could be addressed by adding another layer somewhere in the middle, a set
of units capable of recording the fact that A and B are both on simultaneously,
and therefore capable of inhibiting output nodes that would normally turn
on in the presence of either A or B. So why not add a set of ``in between''
units, creating 3 or 4 or N-layered perceptrons? Unfortunately, the learning
rules available at that time (e.g., the simple delta rule) did not work
with multilayered systems. Furthermore, Minsky and Papert offered the conjecture
that such a learning rule would prove impossible in principle, due to the
combinatorial complexity of delta calculations and ``distribution of blame''
in an n-layered system. As it turns out, this conjecture was wrong (after
all, a conjecture is not a proof). Nevertheless, it was very influential.
Interest in the perceptron as a model of complex mental processes dwindled
in many quarters. From 1970 on, most of artificial intelligence research
abandoned this architecture in favor of the fast, flexible and highly programmable
serial digital computer. And most of cognitive psychology followed suit.
(For a somewhat different account of this history, see Papert, 1988; a good
collection of historically important documents can be found in Anderson
& Rosenfeld, 1989.).
Parallel distributed processing was revived in the late
1970's and early 1980's, for a variety of reasons. In fact, the computational
advantages of such systems were never entirely forgotten (Anderson, 1972;
Feldman & Ballard, 1980; Hinton & Anderson, 1981; Kohonen, 1977;
Willshaw, Buneman, & Longuet-Higgins, 1969), and their resemblance to
real neural systems continued to exert some appeal (Grossberg, 1968, 1972,
1987). But the current ``boom'' in parallel distributed processing or ``connectionism''
was inspired in large measure by the discovery of a learning rule that worked
for multi-layered systems (Rumelhart, Hinton and Williams, 1986; Le Cun,
1985). The Minsky-Papert conjecture was overturned, and there are now many
impressive demonstrations of learning in multilayered neural nets, including
learning of n-order dependencies like ``A or B but not both'' (Rumelhart
and McClelland, 1986 See Footnote 2). Multilayer networks have been shown
to be universal function approximators, which means they can approximate
any function to any arbitrary degree of precision (Hornik, Stinchcombe,
& White; 1989). Such a network is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. A simple perceptron network.
Another reason for the current popularity of connectionism
derives from technical advances in the design of parallel computing systems.
It has become increasingly clear to computer scientists that we are close
to the absolute physical limits on speed and efficiency in serial systems
-- and yet the largest and fastest serial computers still cannot come close
to the speed with which our small, slow, energy-efficient brains recognize
patterns and decide where and how to move. As Carver Mead has pointed out
(Mead, 1989), it is time to ``reverse-engineer Nature'', to figure out the
principles by which real brains compute information. It is still the case
that most connectionist simulations are actually carried out on serial digital
computers (which mimic parallelism by carrying out a set of would-be parallel
computations in a series, and waiting for the result until the next wave
of would-be parallel computations is ready to go). But new, truly parallel
architectures are coming on line (e.g., the now-famous Connection Machine)
to implement those discoveries that have been made with pseudo-parallel
simulations. Parallel distributed processing appears to be the solution
elected by Evolution, and (if Mead is right) computer science will have
to move in this direction to capture the kinds of processing that human
beings do so well.
For developmental psychologists, the Second Computer Metaphor
holds some clear advantages for the study of change in human beings. The
first set involves the same four areas in which the First Computer Metaphor
has let us down: the nature of representations, rules or ``mappings'', learning,
and the hardware/software issue. The last two are advantages peculiar to
connectionist networks: non-linear dynamics, and emergent form.
(1) Distributed representations. The representations
employed in connectionist nets differ radically from the symbols manipulated
by serial digital computers. First, these representations are ``coarse-coded'',
distributed across many different units. Because of this property, it is
reasonable to talk about the degree to which a representation is active
or the amount of a representation that is currently available in this system
(i.e., 50% of an ``A'' or 99% of the number ``7''). This also means that
patterns can be built up or torn down in bits and pieces, accounting for
the graded nature of learning in most instances, and for the gradual or
graded patterns of breakdown that are typically displayed by brain-damaged
individuals (Hinton and Shallice, 1991; Marchman, 1992; Seidenberg &
McClelland, 1989; Schwartz, Saffron, & Dell, 1990). Second, the same
units can participate in many different patterns, and many different patterns
coexist in a super-imposed fashion across the same set of units. This fact
that can be used to account for degrees of similarity between patterns,
and for the ways in which patterns penetrate, facilitate and/or interfere
with one another at various points in learning and development (for an expanded
discussion of this point, see Bates, Thal and Marchman, 1991).
(2) Graded Rules. Contrary to rumor, it is not
the case that connectionist systems have no rules. However, the rules or
``mappings'' employed by connectionist nets take a very different form from
the crisp algorithms contained within the programs employed by a serial
digital computer. These include the learning rule itself (i.e., the principle
by which the system reduces error and ``decides'' when it has reached a
good fit between input and output), and the functions that determine when
and how a unit will fire. But above all, the ``rules'' in a connectionist
net include the connections that hold among units, i.e., the links or ``weights''
that embody all the potential mappings from input to output across the system
as a whole. This means that rules (like representations) can exist by degree,
and vary in strength.
It should also be clear from this description that it
is difficult to distinguish between rules and representations in a connectionist
net. The knowledge or ``mapping potential'' of a network is comprised of
the units that participate in distributed patterns, and the connections
among those units. Because all these potential mappings coexist across the
same ``territory'', they must compete with one another to resolve a given
input. In the course of this competition, the system does not ``decide''
between alternatives in the usual sense; rather, it ``relaxes'' or ``resolves''
into a (temporary) state of equilibrium. In a stochastic system of this
kind, it is possible for several different networks to reach the same solution
to a problem, each with a totally different set of weights. This fact runs
directly counter to the tendency in traditional cognitive and linguistic
research to seek ``the rule'' or ``the grammar'' that underlies a set of
behavioral regularities. In other words, rules are not absolute in any sense
-- they can vary by degree within a given individual, and they can also
vary in their internal structure from one individual to another. We believe
that these properties are far more compatible with the combination of universal
tendencies and individual variation that we see in the course of human development,
and they are compatible with the remarkable neural and behavioral plasticity
that is evident in children who have suffered early brain injury (Thal et
al. 1991; Marchman, 1992).
(3) Learning as structural change. As we pointed
out earlier, much of the current excitement about connectionist systems
revolves around their capacity for learning and self-organization. Indeed,
the current boom in connectionism has brought learning and development back
onto center stage in cognitive science. These systems really do change as
a function of learning, displaying forms of organization that were not placed
there by the programmer (or by Nature, or by the Hand of God). To be sure,
the final product is co-determined by the initial structure of the system
and the data to which it is exposed. These systems are not anarchists, nor
solipsists. But in no sense is the final product ``copied'' or programmed
in. Furthermore, once the system has learned it is difficult for it to ``unlearn'',
if by ``unlearning'' we mean a return to its pristine prelearning state.
This is true for the reasons described in (1) and (2): the knowledge contained
in connectionist nets is contained in and defined by its very architecture,
in the connection weights that currently hold among all units as a function
of prior learning. Knowledge is not ``retrieved'' from some passive store,
nor is it ``placed in'' or ``passed between'' spatially localized buffers.
Learning is structural change, and experience involves the activation of
potential states in that system as it is currently structured.
From this point of view, the term ``acquisition'' is an
infelicitous way of talking about learning or change. Certain states become
possible in the system, but they are not acquired in the usual sense, i.e.,
found or purchased or stored away like nuts in preparation for the winter.
This property of connectionist systems permits us to do away with problems
that have been rampant in certain areas of developmental psychology, e.g.,
the problem of determining ``when'' a given piece of knowledge is acquired,
or ``when'' a rule finally becomes productive. Instead, development (like
the representations and mappings on which it is based) can be viewed as
a gradual process; there is no single moment at which learning can be said
to occur (but see non-linearity, below).
(4) Software as Hardware. We have stated that knowledge
in connectionist nets is defined by the very structure of the system. For
this reason, the hardware/software distinction is impossible to maintain
under the Second Computer Metaphor. This is true whether or not the structure
of connectionist nets as currently conceived is ``neurally real'', i.e.,
like the structure that holds in real neural systems. We may still have
the details wrong (indeed, we probably do), but the important point for
present purposes is that there is no further excuse for ignoring potential
neural constraints on proposed cognitive architectures. The distinction
that has separated cognitive science and neuroscience for so long has fallen,
like the Berlin Wall. Some cognitive psychologists and philosophers of science
believe that is not a good thing (and indeed, the same might be said someday
for the Berlin Wall). But we are convinced that this historic is a good
one, especially for those of us who are interested in the codevelopment
of mind and brain. We are going the right direction, even though we have
a long way to go.
(5) Non-linear dynamics. Connectionist networks
are non-linear dynamical systems, a fact that follows from several properties
of connectionist architecture including the existence of intervening layers
between inputs and outputs (permitting the system to go beyond linear mappings),
the non-linear threshold functions that determine how and when a single
unit will fire, and the learning rules that bring about a change in the
weighted connections between units. Because these networks are non-linear
systems, they can behave in unexpected ways, mimicking the U-shaped learning
functions and sudden moments of ``insight'' that challenged old Stimulus-Response
theories of learning, and helped to bring about the cognitive revolution
in the 1960's (Plunkett & Marchman, 1991a, 1991b; MacWhinney, 1991).
(6) Emergent form. Because connectionist networks
are non-linear systems, capable of unexpected forms of change, they are
also capable of producing truly novel outputs. In trying to achieve stability
across a large number of superimposed, distributed patterns, the network
may hit on a solution that was ``hidden'' in bits and pieces of the data;
that solution may be transformed and generalized across the system as a
whole, resulting in what must be viewed as a qualitative shift. This is
the first precise, formal embodiment of the notion of emergent form -- an
idea that stood at the heart of Piaget's theory of change in cognitive systems.
As such, connectionist systems may have the very property that we need to
free ourselves from the Nature-Nurture controversy. New structures can emerge
at the interface between ``nature'' (the initial architecture of the system)
and ``nurture'' (the input to which that system is exposed). These new structures
are not the result of black magic, or vital forces. They are the result
of laws that govern the integration of information in non-linear systems
-- which brings us to our final section.
(4) Some Common Misconceptions about Connectionism
It is no doubt quite clear to the reader that we are enthusiastic
about the Second Computer Metaphor, because we believe that it will help
us to pick up a cold trail that Piaget first pioneered, moving toward a
truly interactive theory of change. But we are aware of how much there is
to do, and how many pitfalls lie before us. We are also aware of some of
the doubts and worries about this movement that are currently in circulation.
Perhaps it would be useful to end this essay with some answers to some common
misconceptions about connectionism, with special reference to the application
of connectionist principles within developmental psychology.
Worry #1. ``Connectionism is nothing but associationism,
and we already know the limits of associationism'' (e.g., Fodor and Pylyshyn,
1988). As we pointed out above, multi-layer connectionist nets are non-linear
dynamical systems, whereas the familiar associationist models of the past
rested on assumptions of linearity. This is both the good news, and the
bad news. The good news is that non-linear systems can learn relationships
of considerable complexity, and they can produce surprising and (of course)
non-linear forms of change. The bad news is that no one really understands
the limits and capabilities of non-linear dynamical systems. Maybe this
is also good news: we have finally met our goal, after years of physics
envy, because we have finally reached the same frontiers of ignorance as
the physicists! Presumably, the limits of these systems will someday be
known (although probably not within our lifetimes). But right now, it would
be grossly premature to claim that connectionist networks can ``never''
perform certain functions. Anyone who claims that we already know the limits
of this kind of associationism has been misinformed.
Worry #2. ``There are no interesting internal representations
in connectionist nets'' (e.g., Pinker & Prince, 1988). There are indeed
complex and rich representations in connectionist networks, and transformations
that do the same work as rules in classical systems. However, these rules
and representations take a radically different form from the familiar symbols
and algorithms of serial digital computers and/or generative linguistics.
The representations and rules embodied in connectionist nets are implicit
and highly distributed. Part of the challenge of modern research on neural
networks is to understand exactly what a net has learned after is has reached
some criterion of performance. So far, the answer appears to be that they
do not look like anything we have ever seen before (for examples, see Elman,
1989, 1990, 1991).
Worry #3. ``Connectionist nets only yield interesting
performance on cognitive problems when the experiment `sneaks in' the solution
by (a) fixing the internal weights until they work, or (b) laying out the
solution in the input'' (e.g., Lachter & Bever, 1988). Part of the fascination
of connectionist modelling lies in the fact that it offers the experimenter
so many surprises. These are self-organizing systems that learn how to solve
a problem. As the art is currently practiced, NO ONE fiddles with the internal
weights but the system itself, in the course of learning. Indeed, in a simulation
of any interesting level of complexity, it would be virtually impossible
to reach a solution by ``hand-tweaking'' of the weights. As for the issue
of ``sneaking the solution into the input'', we have seen several simulations
in which the Experimenter did indeed try to make the input as explicit as
possible -- and yet the system stubbornly found a different way to solve
the problem. Good connectionist modelers approach their simulations with
the same spirit of discovery and breathless anticipation that is very familiar
to those who carry out real experiments with real children. Aside from being
close to impossible, cheating would not be any fun at all -- and the hand-crafting
of solutions is usually considered a form of cheating.
Worry #4. ``The supposed commitment to neural plausibility
is a scam; no one really takes it seriously.'' Connectionists work at many
different levels between brain and behavior. In current simulations of higher
cognitive processes, it is true that the architecture is ``brain- like''
only in a very indirect sense. In fact, the typical 100-neuron connectionist
toy is ``brain-like'' only in comparison with the serial digital computer
(which is wildly unlike nervous systems of any known kind). The many qualities
that separate real brains from connectionist simulations have been described
in detail elsewhere (Hertz, Krogh and Palmer, 1991; Crick, 1989; Churchland
and Sejnowski, in press). The real questions are: (a) is there anything
of interest that can be learned from simulations in simplified systems,
and (b) can connectionists ``add in'' constraints from real neural systems
in a series of systematic steps, approaching something like a realistic
theory of mind and brain? Of course we still do not know the answer to either
of these questions, but there are many researchers in the connectionist
movement who are trying to bring these systems closer to neural reality.
For example, efforts are underway to study the computational properties
of different neuronal types. Some researchers are exploring analogues to
synaptogenesis and synaptic pruning in neural nets. Others are looking into
the computational analogues of neural transmitters within a fixed network
structure. The current hope is that work at all these different levels will
prove to be compatible, and that a unified theory of the mind and brain
will someday emerge. Of course we are a long way off, but the commitment
by most of the researchers that we know in this field is a very serious
one. It has launched a new spirit of interdisciplinary research in cognitive
neuroscience, one with important implications for developmental psychology.
Worry #5. ``Connectionism is anti-nativist, and
efforts are underway to reinstate a tabula rasa approach to mind and development''
(e.g., Kirsh, 1992). It is true that many current simulations assume something
like a tabula rasa in the first stages of learning (e.g., a random ``seeding''
of weights among fully-connected units before learning begins). This has
proven to be a useful simplifying assumption, in order to learn something
about the amount and type of structure that has to be assumed for a given
type of learning to go through. But there is no logical incompatibility
between connectionism and nativism. Indeed, just as many historians have
argued that Franklin Delano Roosevelt saved capitalism, connectionism may
prove to be the salvation of nativist approaches to mind. The problem with
current nativist theories is that they offer no serious account of what
it might mean in biological terms for a given structure or idea to be innate.
In neural networks, it is possible to explore various avenues for building
in innate structure, including minor biases that have major structural consequences
across a range of environmental conditions (Jacobs, Jordan, & Barto,
1991). In fact, within connectionist models there are coherent ways to talk
about 90% or 10% of any innate idea! This is an approach that has not been
explored in any detail to date, but the possibilities are intriguing, and
might (ironically enough) end up being connectionism's greatest contribution
to developmental cognitive neuroscience.
To conclude, we are willing to speculate that we will
soon see a revival of Piagetian theory within a connectionist framework
-- not a mindless reinterpretation of the old theory in modern jargon, but
a return to Piaget's program of genetic epistemology, instantiating his
principles of equilibration and adaptation in concrete systems that really
work -- and really change. As we said before, Piaget spent the later decades
of his life seeking a way of formalizing the theory, to answer critics (including
Piaget himself) who charged that his principles of change were much too
vague. We think that Piaget would have loved these new possibilities if
he had lived to see them. We now have an opportunity to pick up the threads
of his old program and move it forward into an exciting new decade, incorporating
all the new insights and new empirical information that has been gained
in the interim, without abandoning the fundamental commitment of developmental
psychology to the study of change.
FOOTNOTES
1. This particular school of Functionalism has little to
do with, and is indeed diametrically opposed to, an approach within linguistics
and psycholinguistics alternatively called Functional Grammar or Cognitive
Linguistics. For discussions, see Bates and MacWhinney, 1989; Langacker,
1987; Lakoff, 1987; Givón, 1984.
2. A number of readable introductions to connectionism
are now available. See Bechtel and Abrahamsen, 1991; Churchland and Sejnowski,
in press; Dayhoff, 1990. An excellent but more technical introduction can
be found in Hertz, Krogh, & Palmer, 1991.
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