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In The
Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp.
83-88). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
A Connectionist Single-Mechanism Account of Rule-Like Behavior in Infancy
Morten H. Christiansen & Chris M. Conway, & Suzanne S. Curtin
Abstract
One of the most controversial issues in cognitive science pertains
to whether rules are necessary to explain complex behavior.
Nowhere has the debate over rules been more heated
than within the field of language acquisition. Most researchers
agree on the need for statistical learning mechanisms in language
acquisition, but disagree on whether rule-learning components
are also needed. Marcus, Vijayan, Rao, & Vishton
(1999) have provided evidence of rule-like behavior which
they claim can only be explained by a dual-mechanism account.
In this paper, we show that a connectionist singlemechanism
approach provides a more parsimonious account
of rule-like behavior in infancy than the dual-mechanism approach.
Specifically, we present simulation results from an existing
connectionist model of infant speech segmentation, fitting
the behavioral data under naturalistic circumstances without
invoking rules. We further investigate diverging predictions
from the single- and dual-mechanism accounts through
additional simulations and artificial language learning experiments.
The results support a connectionist single-mechanism
account, while undermining the dual-mechanism account.
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