Connectionism: A Hands-on Approach

CONNNECTIONISM is a “hands on” introduction to connectionist modeling. Three different types of connectionist architectures – distributed associative memory, perceptron, and multilayer perceptron – are explored. In an accessible style, Dawson provides a brief overview of each architecture, a detailed introduction on how to use a program to explore this network, and a series of practical exercises that are designed to highlight the advantages, and disadvantages, of each and to provide a “road map” to the field of cognitive modeling.

This book is designed to be used as a stand-alone volume, or alongside Minds and Machines: Connectionism and Psychological Modeling (Blackwell Publishing, 2004). An accompanying website is available at www.bcp.psych.ualberta.ca/%7emike/book3/index.html and includes practice exercises and software, as well as the files and blank exercise sheets that are required for performing the exercises.