Modelling Conceptual Development: A Computational Account of Conservation Learning.

摘要

This chapter presents the view that concept formation is a critical mechanism in cognitive development. To illustrate this point I present a novel explanation of the formation of Piagetian conservation concepts whose plausibility is supported by an early implementation of a computational model. This model relies heavily on the impasse driven performance and learning nature of the Soar architecture and on an Explanation-Based Learning style generalization process to explain the critical transition that characterizes the acquisition of conservation knowledge. As an account of a developmental phenomenon, this model takes the first steps towards demonstrating unsupervised, incremental learning over an extended range of input and levels of competence. Author (kr)