In this article, we present a perspective on the role of the hippocampal system in generalization, instantiated in a computational model called REMERGE (recurrency and episodic memory results in generalization). We expose a fundamental, but neglected, tension between prevailing computational theories that emphasize the function of the hippocampus…

Classic approaches to word learning emphasize referential ambiguity: In naming situations, a novel word could refer to many possible objects, properties, actions, and so forth. To solve this, researchers have posited constraints, and inference strategies, but assume that determining the referent of a novel word is isomorphic to learning. We…

A scheme is described for locally Bayesian parameter updating in models structured as successions of component functions. The essential idea is to back-propagate the target data to interior modules, such that an interior component's target is the input to the next component that maximizes the probability of the next component's target. Each layer…

This article reviews evidence and theories concerning the nature of stimulus representations in Pavlovian conditioning. It focuses on the elemental approach developed in stimulus sampling theory (R. C. Atkinson & W. K. Estes, 1963; R. R. Bush & F. Mosteller, 1951b) and extended by I. P. L. McLaren and N. J. Mackintosh (2000, 2002) and contrasts…