Quinlan06Balance

Re-thinking stages of cognitive development: An appraisal of connectionist models of the balance scale task

Philip T Quinlan, Han L J van der Maas, Brenda R J Jansen, Olaf Booij, Mark Rendell Elsevier Cognition In Press (Available online 30 March 2006)

Abstract:

The present paper re-appraises connectionist attempts to explain how human cognitive development appears to progress through a series of sequential stages. Models of performance on the Piagetian balance scale task are the focus of attention. Limitations of these models are discussed and replications and extensions to the work are provided via the Cascade-Correlation algorithm. An application of multi-group latent class analysis for examining performance of the networks is described and these results reveal fundamental functional characteristics of the networks. Evidence is provided that strongly suggests that the networks are unable to acquire a mastery of torque and, although they do recover certain rules of operation that humans do, they also show a propensity to acquire rules never previously seen.

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bibtex entry.

Note:

I was not involved in the writing of the article. My contribution was a replication of work done by Thomas R. Shultz's of modeling childrens learning behavior on a balance scale task using a cascade correlation neural network. I did this work as a small project during the masters course Simulation of Growth and Development from Han van der Maas.

See also:

link to Dr. P. T. Quinlan's page

link to Prof Dr. Han L.J. van der Maas's page