Knowledge acquisition, accessibility, and use in person perception and stereotyping: Simulation with a recurrent connectionist network.

Abstract

Connectionist models contrast in many ways with the symbolic models that have traditionally been applied within social psychology. In this article the authors apply an autoassociative connectionist model originally developed by J. L. to reproduce several well-replicated and theoretically important phenomena related to person perception and stereotyping. These phenomena are exemplar-based inference, group-based stereotyping, the simultaneous application of several stereotypes to generate emergent characteristics, and the effects of recency and frequency of prior exposures on accessibility (the probability of a representation's use). Though many of these phenomena are explained by current theories in social psychology, the simulation contributes to parsimony and theoretical integration by showing that a single, very simple mechanism can generate them all. The model also predicts a new phenomenon--rapid recovery of accessibility after it has declined to zero.

The formation of novel social category conjunctions in working memory: A possible role for the episodic buffer?

“…The four accounts that do exist implicate varying mechanisms and stages. While Smith and DeCoster's (1998) connectionist account is based on parallel distributed processing (PDP) principles, Kunda et al's (1990) causal reasoning account, Hampton's (1987;1988 Overwalle, & Labiouse, 2004). Accordingly, it is argued that the emergent traits attributed to social category conjunctions are activated automatically, without recourse to effortful processes and in parallel, through spreading activation of traits associated with the constituents: That is, through activation of linked knowledge representations.…”

Implicit Cognition and Addiction: An Introduction

“…Indeed, there is also evidence that associations may automatically trigger actions in the absence of conscious recollection or intentional retrieval (see Palfai, Chapter 26). Automatic activation could occur through a number of different architectures, which have different ways of modeling connections and the operation of activation (e.g., Hintzman, 1990;Smith & DeCoster, 1998). Some of these architectures can readily model higherorder cognitions such as schemas (Hintzman, 1986) or emergent properties of cognition (Bechtel & Abrahamsen, 2002) …”

Cognitive Dissonance and Affect: An Initial Test of a Connectionist Account

“…Connectionist models offer a new perspective on diverse social psychological phenomena, including causal attribution (Van Overwalle, 1998;Read & Montoya, 1999), person impression (Smith & DeCoster, 1998;, group impression and biases (Kashima, Woolcock, & Kashima, 2000;Van Rooy, Van Overwalle, Vanhoomissen, Labiouse, & French, 2003), attitude formation and change (Van Overwalle & Siebler, 2005) and many other social judgments (for a review, see Read & Miller, 1998). A key difference with earlier models is that the connectionist architecture and processing mechanisms are modeled after the neurological properties of the brain.…”

“…This is implemented in the model on the basis of an error-driven learning algorithm, called the delta algorithm, which has been applied in many connectionist models in social cognition (e.g., Read & Montoya, 1999;Smith & DeCoster, 1998;Van Overwalle, 1998;Van Rooy et al, 2003). Figure 1 illustrates the status of the network after a simulation phase mimicking prior social learning, using a simplified learning history (top panel of the simulation table, for full details see also Van Overwalle & Jordens, 2002).…”