Abstract
Marcus et al.’s experiment (1999) concerning infant ability to distinguish between differing syntactic structures has prompted connectionists to strive to show that certain types of neural networks can mimic the infants’ results. In this paper we take a closer look at two such attempts: Shultz and Bale [Shultz, T.R. and Bale, A.C. (2001), Infancy 2, pp. 501–536] Altmann and Dienes [Altmann, G.T.M. and Dienes, Z. (1999) Science 248, p. 875a]. We were not only interested in how well these two models matched the infants’ results, but also whether they were genuinely learning the grammars involved in this process. After performing an extensive set of experiments, we found that, at first blush, Shultz and Bale’s model (2001) replicated the infant’s known data, but the model largely failed to learn the grammars. We also found serious problems with Altmann and Dienes’ model (1999), which fell short of matching any of the infant’s results and of learning the syntactic structure of the input patterns.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- SRN:
-
simple recurrent network
References
Altmann G.T.M., Dienes Z. (1999). Rule learning by seven-month-old infants and neural networks. Science 284:875a
Dienes Z., Altmann G.T.M., Gao S.J. (1999) Mapping across domains without feedback: A neural network model of implicit learning. Cognitive Science 23:53–82
Christiansen, M.H. and Curtin, S.L. (1999), ‘The Power of Statistical Learning: No Need for Algebraic Rules’, in Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 114–119
Christiansen, M.H., Conway, C.M., and Curtin, S.L. (2001), ‘A Connectionist Single-mechanism Account of Rule-like Behavior in Infancy’, in Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 83–88
Elman, J.L. (1999), Generalization, rules, and neural networks: A simulation of Marcus et al. www.crl.ucsd.edu/∼ ∼elman/Papers/MVRVsim.html
Fahlman S.E., Labiere C. (1990) The Cascade-correlation learning architecture. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2:524–532
Hadley R.F. (1995) The Explicit-Implicit Distinction. Minds and Machines 5(2):219–242
Marcus G.F., Vijayan S., Bandi Rao S., Vishton P.M. (1999) Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science 283:77–80
Marcus G.F. (1999) Response to Almann and Dienes. Science 284:875a
Marcus, G.F. (2001), The Algebraic Mind, The MIT Press
Shultz, T.R. (1999), ‘Rule Learning by Habituation can be Simulated in Neural Networks’, in Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 665–670
Shultz T.R., Bale A.C. (2001) Neural network simulation of infant familiarization to artificial sentences: rule-like behavior without explicit rules and variables. Infancy 2:501–536
Vilcu, M., and Hadley, R.F. (2001), ‘Generalization in Simple Recurrent Networks’, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 1072–1077
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Vilcu, M., Hadley, R.F. Two Apparent ‘Counterexamples’ To Marcus: A Closer Look. Mind Mach 15, 359–382 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-005-9000-4
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-005-9000-4