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 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 ideas like 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, Edward Thorndike also made the move towards behaviorist ideas.

Thorndike's cat experiment. Image borrowed from: History of Psychology: American Behaviorism. Click on the picture to follow the link.

At the very end of 19th century Thorndike performed experiments first on chickens and later on 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 resulted in opening the doors was slowly increased as the cat after each successful attempt to open the door needed a bit less time to repeat the same action after being put back into the box. Based on this experiment Thorndike concluded that learning is incremental and not insightful, since the learning of the correct response occurred only through repetition trial and error forming of associations between situation and response. Established connections or knowledge, according to Thorndike also cause and determine intelligence.

To explain observed properties of learning, Thorndike introduced three laws of learning. The first law is the law of exercise (also referred to as law of use or law of 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. The third law, law of readiness, which claims learning is facilitated by learner's readiness (emotional and motivational) to learn. This potential to learn leads to frustration if not satisfied.

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. This laws have set the basic principles of behaviorist stimulus-response views on learning.

Another point of Thorndike's interest in the first two decades of 20th century was the transfer of practice, later often referred to as transfer of learning. Idea of transfer of practice is to generalize the knowledge or skills and apply them for another problem. Thorndike performed experimental studies by which he showed knowledge transfer is specific rather then general and will not occur unless learned problem and given problem share many characteristics. This was the opposite of what school systems mostly suggested at the time, that some school subjects like Latin language and mathematics improve student's mind in general (doctrine of formal discipline).

Guided by the principle that “whatever exists at all exists in some amount”6) Thorndike, Edward L. Individual differences. Psychological bulletin. 1918. Thorndike has introduced a number of tests of knowledge and intelligence. His CAVD (completion, arithmetic, vocabulary and directions) test set the major principles and standards of modern intelligence tests.

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. An example of Thorndike's meaningful learning is learning to multiply by three should be learned in context of converting feet to yards.

Thorndike tried to apply this to learning mathematics7) Thorndike, E. The Psychology of Arithmetic. New York: Macmillan. 1922. , spelling and reading 8) Thorndike, E. The Teacher's Word Book. New York: Teachers College. 1921. , measurement of intelligence 9) Thorndike, E. at al. The Measurement of Intelligence. New York: Teachers College Press. 1927. and adult learning 10) Thorndike, E. et al. Adult Learning. New York: Macmillan. 1928. mostly through his laws of learning. He 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, “trial and error

Herbert Spencer, William James, Edward Thorndike

Criticisms

Thorndike tried to prove that all forms of thoughts and behaviors can be explained through S-R relations with use of repetition and reward, without need for introducing any unobservable internal states, yet this is today generally considered incorrect. This learning through response was later in 20th century replaced by learning as knowledge construction. Connectionism was in the first decades of 20th century succeeded by behaviorism, but Thorndike's experiments also inspired gestalt psychology.

Bibliography

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

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 Schunk, Dale H. Educational psychology: a century of contributions. Routledge, 2003.

Read more

Thorndike, E. The Contribution of Psychology to Education. The Journal of Educational Psychology, 1, 5-12. 1910.

Thorndike, E. Animal Intelligence. 1911.

Bechtel, William, and Adele A. Abrahamsen. Connectionism and the mind: parallel processing, dynamics, and evolution in networks. Wiley-Blackwell, 2002.

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.