Connectionism

General

Connectionism, today defined as an approach in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, cognitive science and philosophy of mind which models mental or behavioral phenomena with networks of simple units1) wordiQ: Connectionism - Definition , is not a theory in frames of behaviorism, it preceded and influenced behaviorist school. Although it is today used in different contexts (mostly referring to neural networks and artificial neural networks that have not emerged until second half of the 20th century) it has origins dating as far back as Greek philosopher Aristotele, who claimed that memory is composed of simple elements connected in a variety of ways2) J. A. Anderson, A. Pellionisz and Rosenfeld, E. Neurocomputing 2. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990. .

What is connectionism?

Connectionism represents psychology's first comprehensive theory of learning3) Zimmerman, Barry J., and Dale H. Schunk. Educational psychology: a century of contributions. Routledge, 2003. . It was later introduced by Herbert Spencer, William James and his student Edward Thorndike in the very beginning of the 20th century. Connectionism was then based on principles of associationism which claimed that4) W. Bechtel and Abrahamsen, A. Connectionism and the Mind: An Introduction to Parallel Processing in Networks. Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, 1991. :

Mental elements or ideas become associated with one another through experience

Experience consists of such things as spatial and temporal contiguity and (dis)similarity of ideas

Complex ideas are composed and can be reduced to a set of simple ideas

Simple ideas are sensations

Simple additive rules are sufficient to predict complex ideas

But connectionism expands this ideas of associationism by introducing distributed representations or supervised learning5) Medler, David A. A Brief History of Connectionism. Neural Computing Surveys, 1(2), p18-72. 1998. and should not be confused with associationism. Although he is considered one of the first true connectionist, William James' student Edward Thorndike also made the move towards behaviorist ideas.

In order to explain some questions concerning learning, Thorndike introduced two laws of learning5). The first law is the law of exercise or use or frequency, which states that stimulus-response (S-R) associations are strengthened through repetition or weakened through lack of repetition. His second law, law of effect, states that the consequence or outcome of a situation-response event can strengthen or weaken the connection between situation and response. If an event is followed by a reinforcing stimulus, the connection will be strengthened and vice versa. This laws have set the basic principles of behaviorist stimulus-response views on learning.

Based on this laws Thorndike considered that all learning is incremental and not insightful, which he tried to prove at the very end of 19th century through experiments first with chickens and later with cats and dogs. In one experiment he placed a hungry cat inside a puzzle box, which had a mechanism that would open the doors of the box every time a string would be pulled or a button pushed. Behavior which was “rewarded” by opening the doors was slowly increased and learning occurred. Thorndike also believed that transfer of learning (application to new situations) occurs only because of previously encountered situations and that intelligence is just a consequence of learned connections.

Thorndike later changed some of his views admitting that he was wrong and that negative reinforcement (punishment) does not really lead to any kind of learning. This had great influence on educational process helping to end the practice of punishing the students for incorrect answers.

What is the practical meaning of connectivism?

Connectionism was at its time considered a general theory of learning for both humans and animals. Thorndike's ideas which could well be applied for learning are the idea that rewards promote learning and that repetition enhances learning. In his book on learning of mathematics6) Thorndike, E. The Psychology of Arithmetic. New York: Macmillan. 1922. , he suggested problem should children are expected to solve and learn from should be realistic. For example, learning to multiply by three should be learned in context of converting feet to yards.

Thorndike tried to apply this to learning mathematics6), spelling and reading 7) Thorndike, E. The Teacher's Word Book. New York: Teachers College. 1921. , measurement of intelligence 8) Thorndike, E. at al. The Measurement of Intelligence. New York: Teachers College Press. 1927. and adult learning 9) Thorndike, E. et al. Adult Learning. New York: Macmillan. 1928. mostly through his laws of learning. Thorndike was one of the pioneers of active learning, proposing children should learn by themselves rather than being thought.

Keywords and most important names

Connectionism, stimulus-response, S-R, networks of simple units, associationism, supervised learning, law of exercise or use or frequency, law of effect, incremental learning

Herbert Spencer, William James, Edward Thorndike

Criticisms

Thorndike tried to prove that all forms of thoughts and behaviors can be explained through repetition and reward, without need for introducing any unobservable internal states, yet this is today generally considered incorrect. Connectionism was in the first decades of 20th century succeeded by behaviorism, but Thorndike's experiments also inspired gestalt psychology.

Bibliography

TIP: Connectionism (E. Thorndike).

Reinemeyer, E. Edward Lee Thorndike. Muskingum University. May 1999.

Medler, David A. A Brief History of Connectionism. Neural Computing Surveys, 1(2), p18-72. 1998.

Zimmerman, Barry J., and Dale H. Schunk. Educational psychology: a century of contributions. Routledge, 2003.

Read more

Thorndike, E. Educational Psychology: The Psychology of Learning. New York: Teachers College Press. 1913.

Thorndike, E. The Psychology of Arithmetic. New York: Macmillan. 1922.

Thorndike, E. The Fundamentals of Learning. New York: Teachers College Press. 1932.

Thorndike, E. et al. Adult Learning. New York: Macmillan . 1928.