Ronan Reilly (1994) Discern as a Cognitive Model and Cognitive . Psycoloquy: 5(78) Language Network (5)
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Psycoloquy 5(78): Discern as a Cognitive Model and Cognitive

DISCERN AS A COGNITIVE MODEL AND COGNITIVE
MODELLING FRAMEWORK
Book Review of Miikkulainen on Language-Network

Ronan Reilly
Dept. of Computer Science
University College Dublin

rreilly@nova.ucd.ie

Abstract

In this review, I evaluate the degree to which I feel Miikkulainen has achieved the goals he set himself in developing DISCERN. On the positive side, I argue that DISCERN is a significant achievement in that it demonstrates the feasibility of building large-scale connectionist systems that exploit the capabilities of distributed representations. The techniques embodied in the FGREP component are important and should prove useful in other applications. On the negative side, however, I consider that DISCERN represents a missed opportunity. I do not believe that scripts tell us much that is useful about real natural language processing, nor do I believe that a system designed to process scripts can be an informative basis for cognitive modelling.

Keywords

computational modeling, connectionism, distributed neural networks, episodic memory, lexicon, natural language processing, scripts.

References