We present a neural-competitive learning model of language evolution in which several symbol sequences compete to signify a given propositional meaning. Both symbol sequences and propositional meanings are represented by high-dimensional vectors of real numbers. A neural network learns to map between the distributed representations of the symbol sequences and the distributed representations of ...

In this paper, we describe and compare systems for text normalization based on statistical machine translation (SMT) methods which are constructed with the support of internet users. Internet users normalize text displayed in a web interface, thereby providing a parallel corpus of normalized and nonnormalized text. With this corpus, SMT models are generated to translate non-normalized into norm...

Probabilistic methods are providing new explanatory approaches to fundamental cognitive science questions of how humans structure, process and acquire language. This review examines probabilistic models defined over traditional symbolic structures. Language comprehension and production involve probabilistic inference in such models; and acquisition involves choosing the best model, given innate...

Abstract. This paper investigates the performance of explanatory or abductive inference in certain hypothesis selection tasks. The strategy is to use various measures of explanatory power to compare competing hypotheses and then make an inference to the best explanation. Computer simulations are used to compare the accuracy of such approaches with a standard approach when uncertainty is present...

Dein (2002) comments on our editorial on explanatory models (Bhui & Bhugra, 2002), but fails to apprehend the conceptual flaws in his assertions, promotes a complacent attitude to the challenges of cultural psychiatry, and is threatened by a patient’s explanatory model that differs from his own. Dein agrees with us that explanatory models are not stable, and are dynamic, complex, shifting entit...

Dein (2002) comments on our editorial on explanatory models (Bhui & Bhugra, 2002), but fails to apprehend the conceptual flaws in his assertions, promotes a complacent attitude to the challenges of cultural psychiatry, and is threatened by a patient’s explanatory model that differs from his own. Dein agrees with us that explanatory models are not stable, and are dynamic, complex, shifting entit...

Dein (2002) comments on our editorial on explanatory models (Bhui & Bhugra, 2002), but fails to apprehend the conceptual flaws in his assertions, promotes a complacent attitude to the challenges of cultural psychiatry, and is threatened by a patient’s explanatory model that differs from his own. Dein agrees with us that explanatory models are not stable, and are dynamic, complex, shifting entit...

Dein (2002) comments on our editorial on explanatory models (Bhui & Bhugra, 2002), but fails to apprehend the conceptual flaws in his assertions, promotes a complacent attitude to the challenges of cultural psychiatry, and is threatened by a patient’s explanatory model that differs from his own. Dein agrees with us that explanatory models are not stable, and are dynamic, complex, shifting entit...