Semantic Cognition: A Parallel Distributed Processing Approach

Timothy T. Rogers is a research scientist at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England.

"This book deals with one of the central questions in cognitive science: What is the nature of semantic knowledge? The computational framework that Rogers and McClelland propose, while elegant in its simplicity, provides deep insights into the development (and loss, with brain damage) of category structure, causal knowledge, and semantic organization. In providing both a mechanistic processing account as well as an interpretation of the principles underlying the mechanism's properties, Rogers and McClelland explain a wide range of complex phenomena that have hitherto resisted a unified account. This is a very important book." --Jeff Elman, Professor of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego "This important book pushes connectionism into the true heartland of cognitive science: human semantic cognition. Through an elegant weave of empirical reviews and specific PDP models, topics in adult cognition, cognitive development, and neuropsychology are brought together and underlying computational principles revealed. Destined to become an influential landmark in the field, the book will be essential reading for a wide range of cognitive scientists." --Mark Johnson, Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, University of London "A fascinating exploration of the conceptual systems that emerge when a neural network is trained to predict the properties of objects. Rogers and McClelland show that incremental, error-driven learning leads to internal distributed representations that explain a whole variety of empirical phenomena. Their network exhibits remarkable common sense in the way it generalizes, and distinctly human frailty in the way its knowledge disintegrates when it is physically degraded. The book uses very little technical jargon and the reasoning is clear, detailed, and compelling." --Geoffrey Hinton, FRS, Canada Research Chair in Machine Learning, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto "This is a fascinating book. It