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Cognitive Science Society

From concrete examples to abstract relations

A model-based neuroscience account of how people learn a new category from examples.

System outline
  1. 01Concrete examples
  2. 02Category learning
  3. 03Abstract relations

The idea

Learning a new category starts with particular examples and has to end with a relation that covers examples you have not seen. This paper treats that step as a problem for both the behavioural data and a model of the learning.

The approach

People learn new categories from concrete examples. A model-based neuroscience approach is used to connect the learning to the abstract relation the category depends on, rather than to surface features of the training items.

  • New categories learned from examples
  • The target is the relation, not the surface
  • Behaviour tied to a model of the learning
  • Roberts, Goldwater, Livesey, Giron, Davis
  • Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society, 39

The paper: escholarship.org .