A Cognitive Model for Generalization during Sequential Learning.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Robotics Volume 2011, Article ID 617613, 12 pages doi:10.1155/2011/617613 Research Article A Cognitive Model for Generalization during Sequential Learning Ashish Gupta,1 Lovekesh Vig,2 and David C. Noelle3 1 Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235-1826, USA 2 School of Comptational and Integrative Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India 3 School of Engineering, University of California, Merced, Merced, CA 95343, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Lovekesh Vig, lovekeshvigin@ Received 31 May 2011; Revised 2 September 2011; Accepted 20 September 2011 Academic Editor: Ivo Bukovsky Copyright © 2011 Ashish Gupta et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Traditional artificial neural network models of learning suffer from catastrophic interference. They are commonly trained to perform only one specific task, and, when trained on a new task, they forget the original task completely. It has been shown that the foundational neurocomputational principles embodied by the Leabra cognitive modeling framework, specifically fast lateral inhibition and a local synaptic plasticity model that incorporates both correlational and error-based components, are sufficient to largely overcome this limitation during the sequential learning of multiple motor skills. Evidence has also provided that Leabra is able to generalize the subsequences of motor skills, when doing so is appropriate. In this paper, we provide a detailed analysis of the extent of generalization possible with L