Research Catalog

Title

Rethinking innateness : a connectionist perspective on development / Jeffrey L. Elman [and others].

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [1996], ©1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Elman, Jeffrey L.

Description

xviii, 447 pages : illustrations; 24 cm.

Summary

• Rethinking Innateness asks the question, "What does it really mean to say that a behavior is innate?" The authors describe a new framework in which interactions, occurring at all levels, give rise to emergent forms and behaviors. These outcomes often may be highly constrained and universal, yet they are not themselves directly contained in the genes in any domain-specific way.
• One of the key contributions of Rethinking Innateness is a taxonomy of ways in which a behavior can be innate. These include constraints at the level of representation, architecture, and timing; typically, behaviors arise through the interaction of constraints at several of these levels.
• The ideas are explored through dynamic models inspired by a new kind of "developmental connectionism," a marriage of connectionist models and developmental neurobiology, forming a new theoretical framework for the study of behavioral development. While relying heavily on the conceptual and computational tools provided by connectionism, Rethinking Innateness also identifies ways in which these tools need to be enriched by closer attention to biology.

Series Statement

Neural network modeling and connectionism

Uniform Title

Neural network modeling and connectionism.

Subject

• Nature and nurture
• Connectionism
• Nativism (Psychology)

Note

• "A Bradford book."

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [397]-441) and index.

Contents

Ch. 1. New perspectives on development -- Ch. 2. Why connectionism? -- Ch. 3. Ontogenetic development: A connectionist synthesis -- Ch. 4. The shape of change -- Ch. 5. Brain development -- Ch. 6. Interactions, all the way down -- Ch. 7. Rethinking innateness.

ISBN

0262050528 (hb : alk. paper)

LCCN

96015522

OCLC

ocm34676688

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries