Connectionism is this notion that we have; it's kind of a philosophical notion. We have
neurons in the brain, we've already seen that we have different areas of the brain responsible
for different human functions: cognitive, behavioral, emotional, etc. But where in
your brain resides any particular memory? And they used to look for these particular
places, maybe there's a grandma cell that allows you to recognize your own grandmother
from all the little old ladies that you might encounter. How do you recognize that one
distinguish from everybody else? Perhaps there's a location in your brain that's the grandma
location that is responsible for picking that stimulus out of all possible stimuli. But
it doesn't look like we have that, it looks like we have lots of areas of the brain that
are involved in almost all of our memories. So, there's visual components, there's auditory
components, you might even think of particular smells of your grandmothers house that you
went to as a kid, all kinds of components about the concept of grandma, right? And then
we have a schema for grandmother, or grandfather, or father, or mother, or sibling, or whatever,
whatever, whatever, whatever. So we've got all these constants that come together when
we pick out a particular person and identify them as somebody we know. In fact, on the
way over here, when we perceive we make bets, we make gambles. I saw somebody coming across
the parking lot, I was pretty sure was Justin Mullins, a friend of mine who used to be in
this class. And he has a beard, and he has long brown hair. And I was going to say, "hey"
to him until he got close enough that I recognized he's another guy with long brown hair and
a beard. So my perception was effected by my schema or belief of what I would see, and
it was corrected only because I looked long enough to then take in additional data and
realize that I had to distinguish. So where did the distinguish come from in the brain?
That is a great question that's unanswered. We know that the hippocampus is involved
in remembering new things, right? And we know multiple areas of the brain are involved in
remembering most things, and we've got metaphors for short term memory and long term memory,
but there doesn't seem to be a neuron that is responsible for any given memory. There's
multiple neurons, and multiple areas of the brain, and the idea is that these things are
connected with one another, so there's a connectionism right? So that your idea of grandma could
be connected with your idea of family, which could be connected with your experiences as
a child, which is then connected with your identification of this particular person as
being grandma, or this particular person as being Justin or not Justin. And so you're connecting
all of these things in your brain but not consciously connecting them. These are the
connections between neurons that allow us to bring concepts together and to use them
in day to day life. Semantic network is this idea that concepts are linked by pathways.
Memories are envisioned as a complex network of "nodes", and you could put "nodes" in quotes.
Little pieces or units of memory that are connected together where one thought about
one node, will trigger a thought about another node, which would trigger a thought about
another node, and if you think about William James and his idea of stream of consciousness,
where is your next thought coming from? It's coming, but where is it coming from? What
triggers the next thought, or the next thought? Or the next thought? Well, from a semantic
network point of view, whatever you're thinking about now, however tangentially related it
is, is in some way related to a thing that you're about to think. And then that will
be related to the thing you're about to think next. So we're looking at these nodes as standing,
so to speak, as schemas for labels or concepts, a conceptual hierarchy is a a multilevel classification
system based on comic properties, and I'll show you a graphic of this in a minute. And
clustering is not unlike, the thing we talked about: chunking. When you cluster common things
together it makes them easier to remember. So if you think about our metaphor of a computer,
right? Whenever you're going through and defragmenting a computer, what are you doing? You're reorganizing
it so that it's more effecient. So the idea is that if you've got things that are similar
to one another in the same space, conceptually, they should be easier to remember than if
they're scattered about in their hierarchy or in their schema. So clustering makes it
easier to remember similar related items in a group, and then we classify groups in a
hierarchical fashion in a way that allows us to identify very quickly elements that
we see as stimuli, and apply labels that are often times correct, though not always correct.
You all good with that? Need a little more? Cool. I'm trying to pick up the pace realizing
we're back behind three classes, but at the same time, I don't want to lose anybody. If
you need me to slow down, feel free at any point to ask a question or offer a comment
or just say, "Could you please slow down?" And I will. So, semantic network comes out
of the notion of nodes being connected in the mind, and mind is more metaphorical than
actual material, right? Neuronal brain mass, but obviously that's what we're also talking
about right? Nothing that you think, feel, or do, does not involve neurons firing, right?
So there is a physical under pinning of all human cognitive and behavioral activity. And
this semantic network, and conceptual hierarchy can be related right here. So, at the first
level, I might have a bunch of different qualities. So I've got yellow, I've got singing. And then if
I'm talking about birds, I've got a canary is yellow and it sings. Ostrich? That don't look
like a bird, right? So to a little kid, you have to teach it, what? It's got feathers, well
it doesn't fly. Well, I have to then what? I have to accommodate my birds schema and
develop an elaborate larger schema that now includes birds that are very large that have
long, thin legs, very tall and they can't fly. Well those underlie the idea of bird,
right? So I've got an upper level category that accounts for both of these sub categories
which then account for other sub categories, and birds have got wings, can't fly, have feathers.
Shark? Salmon? They're both fish, but I'd rather swim with one and not the other, right?
So you learn that shark can bite and is dangerous. Salmon? Ain't so dangerous. Right? They're
pretty easy to catch, especially if you're a bear. Sit in the stream; they're coming,
right? Mating season, they're going to come right at you. They're pink, they're edible,
they swim upstream. Well sharks aren't pink, they're edible, but be careful catching them,
right? And you've got this expanded schema for different kinds of fish, and you go, what
does a little kid do when it sees a whale? Fish. And you have to say, "Ahhhhh, no, mammal."
And they're like, "Nah, that ain't a mammal. It's swimming around like all the other fish."
Right? You're like no, air breathing, etc., gives birth to live young, etc. So now you've
got fish, and both of those are under animal. You see what I'm saying? So that's the idea
of a conceptual hierarchy,. The idea is that these are also nodes, and any thought about
one can trigger a thought about another. And so I used to hang out with people back in
the day who hung out and did a lot of drugs. Not all the drugs I did; I didn't do these
drugs mostly. But cocaine is one I didn't do but hung out with people who did do. And
my God, these people talk a lot. They talk, and they talk, and they talk, and they talk.
And it's like a stream of consciousness because it's not organized in any fashion. It's the
weirdest thing and it kind of, for me, helps understand like, connectionism and node, right? And so
they'll be like, "Oh man, did you see that thing on sharks the other night, man? Those
teeth on those things! Speaking of teeth, I had a tooth ache the other day, man. I went
to the dentist and he gave me that gas. Speaking of gas man, I got some helium balloons,man.
And I've got them for the party. Oh the party? Yeah, man. You know about the democratic party and what
they're doing in..." And they just go on and on. And every little thing triggers a new thing,
and there's no real logical sequence to it. It's connection, connection, connection, connection,
connection, connection. And then they start drooling and they... Nah, I'm just
kidding. Some of them do. [Student]: Isn't that like schizophrenia? [Dula]: No, no, schizophrenia we'll
get into in the abnormal thing. Schizophrenia is really a departing from reality -- in a way
or perceiving the world. And schemas can be modified in schizophrenia. In fact, they frequently
are to account for things that other people don't see. But when somebody's just going
through a bunch of random connections, they're not hallucinating, they're not delusional --
they can become delusional, they can actually get into something we're not going to talk
about now but we will later which is, you know, amphetamines taken over a long period
of time can very well resemble paranoia and psychosis. But in this case, I'm just talking
about people who are, for whatever reason, and little kids do it too, all of us do it,
that's what we're saying when we think. "Alright, whats your next thought going to be?" It's
probably going to be related in some tangential way to a thought you're having now. But you
won't explicitly make that connection, you'll just start thinking the next thing, and the
next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing. And the idea from connectionism and
networking, is that those things are probably somehow related. Although it may be very difficult
to see the relation.