Cogprints
Login | Create Account

Experimental Analysis of Naming Behavior Cannot Explain Naming Capacity

Harnad, Stevan (1996) Experimental Analysis of Naming Behavior Cannot Explain Naming Capacity. [Journal (Paginated)]

[img]HTML
15Kb

Abstract

The experimental analysis of naming behavior can tell us exactly the kinds of things Horne & Lowe (H & L) report here: (1) the conditions under which people and animals succeed or fail in naming things and (2) the conditions under which bidirectional associations are formed between inputs (objects, pictures of objects, seen or heard names of objects) and outputs (spoken names of objects, multimodal operations on objects). The "stimulus equivalence" that H & L single out is really just the reflexive, symmetric and transitive property of pairwise associations among the above. This is real and of some interest, but it unfortunately casts very little light on symbolization and language in general, and naming capacity in particular. The associative equivalence between name and object is trivial in relation to the real question, which is: How do we (or any system that can do it) manage to connect names to things correctly (Harnad 1987, 1990, 1992)? The experimental analysis of naming behavior begs this question entirely, simply taking it for granted that the connection is somehow successfully accomplished.

Item Type:Journal (Paginated)
Keywords:naming behavior, naming capacity, stimulus equivalence, categorization, symbol grounding, causal modeling
Subjects:Psychology > Behavioral Analysis
Psychology > Cognitive Psychology
Linguistics > Semantics
ID Code:1605
Deposited By:Harnad, Stevan
Deposited On:19 Jun 2001
Last Modified:19 Dec 2009 19:17

References in Article

Select the SEEK icon to attempt to find the referenced article. If it does not appear to be in cogprints you will be forwarded to the paracite service. Poorly formated references will probably not work.

Biederman, I. & Shiffrar, M. M. (1987) Sexing day-old chicks: A case study and expert systems

analysis of a difficult perceptual-learning task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,

Memory, & Cognition 13: 640 - 645.

Catania, A.C. & Harnad, S. (eds.) (1988) The Selection of Behavior. The Operant Behaviorism of BF

Skinner: Comments and Consequences. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Harnad, S. (1976) Induction, evolution and accountability. In: Harnad, S., Steklis, H. D. & Lancaster,

J. B. (eds.) (1976) Origins and Evolution of Language and Speech. Annals of the New York Academy

of Sciences 280: 58 - 60.

Harnad, S. (1982) Neoconstructivism: A unifying theme for the cognitive sciences. In: Language, mind

and brain (T. Simon & R. Scholes, eds., Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum), 1 - 11.

Harnad, S. (1984) What are the scope and limits of radical behaviorist theory? The Behavioral and

Brain Sciences 7: 720 -721.

Harnad, S. (1987) The induction and representation of categories. In: Harnad, S. (ed.) (1987)

Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Harnad, S. (1990) The Symbol Grounding Problem. Physica D 42: 335-346.

Harnad, S. (1992) Connecting Object to Symbol in Modeling Cognition. In: A. Clarke and R. Lutz

(Eds) Connectionism in Context Springer Verlag.

Harnad, S. (1995a) Grounding Symbolic Capacity in Robotic Capacity. In: Steels, L. and R. Brooks

(eds.) The "artificial life" route to "artificial intelligence." Building Situated Embodied Agents. New

Haven: Lawrence Erlbaum

Harnad, S. (1995b) The Origin of Words: A Psychophysical Hypothesis In Durham, W &

Velichkovsky B (Eds.) "Naturally Human: Origins and Destiny of Language." Muenster: Nodus Pub.

Harnad, S., Hanson, S.J. & Lubin, J. (1991) Categorical Perception and the Evolution of Supervised

Learning in Neural Nets. In: Working Papers of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Machine Learning of

Natural Language and Ontology (DW Powers & L Reeker, Eds.) pp.>

Transfer interrupted!

bol Grounding: Problems and Practice, Stanford University, March 1991; also reprinted as Document

D91-09, Deutsches Forschungszentrum fur Kuenstliche Intelligenz GmbH Kaiserslautern FRG.

Harnad, S. Hanson, S.J. & Lubin, J. (1995) Learned Categorical Perception in Neural Nets:

Implications for Symbol Grounding. In: V. Honavar & L. Uhr (eds) Symbol Processors and

Connectionist Network Models in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Modelling: Steps Toward

Principled Integration. pp. 191-206. Acadamic Press.

Livingston, K., Andrews, J. & Harnad, S. (in preparation) Categorical Perception Induced by

Learning.

Skinner, B.F. (1984a) Selection by Consequences. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7: 477-510.

Skinner, B.F. (1984b) An Operant Analysis of Problem-Solving. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7:

583-614.

Steklis, H.D. & Harnad, S. (1976) From hand to mouth: Some critical stages in the evolution of

language. In: Harnad, S., Steklis, H. D. & Lancaster, J. B. (eds.) (1976) Origins and Evolution of

Language and Speech. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 280: 445-455.

Metadata

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Cogprints is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.