We deal with a problem that can be considered as part of the symbol grounding problem and is related to anchoring, but for a more general case that includes symbols that do not denote directly physical objects but rather the physical sensorimotor interactions between a robot body and physical objects. The fundamental role of this kind of symbols for robotic intelligence can be derived from the ...

The standard information flow view of cognition and language has environmental information being transduced at sensory surfaces, the encodings thereby generated being processed in internal cognition (whether of symbol manipulation or connectionist or neural net form, or all of the above), and further output encodings being generated for action, such as walking or eating. A special case of outpu...

A data dictionary system with a query compiler is implemented in a symbol manipulation language, separate from the underlying database system. The query compiler (or program generator) generates COBOL programs for database access. These programs are optimized at generation time using information from the data dictionary. The implementation technique makes it possible to combine pilot implementa...

We explore the suitability of Dolev-Yao-based attacker models for the security analysis of wireless communication. The Dolev-Yao model is commonly used for wireline and wireless networks. It is defined on abstract messages exchanged between entities and includes arbitrary, real-time modification of messages by the attacker. In this work, we aim at understanding and evaluating the conditions und...

A cognitive task analysis was performed to aid in the development of a cognitive model and associated tutor for the task of correctly solving a subset of the analytic ability questions from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). This task combines a number of important issues relevant to cognitive theory including working memory load, building appropriate external representations, symbol use an...

In a brain imaging study of children learning algebra, it is shown that the same regions are active in children solving equations as are active in experienced adults solving equations. As with adults, practice in symbol manipulation produces a reduced activation in prefrontal cortex area. However, unlike adults, practice seems also to produce a decrease in a parietal area that is holding an ima...

A grammar is a theory about a language. Theories may be formulated in a natural language, describing the properties of the object in question. Another way of providing information about an object is designing a model. A model is an artificial construct resembling the object in certain respects. In linguistics, formal models play a major role. A formal model (or formalism) consists of a set of s...

symbol manipulation (accessible only to students with advanced mathematical training). The second is more subtle: differential equations deal in aggregate quantities. In the Lotka-Volterra system, for example, the differential equations describe how the overall populations (not the individual creatures) evolve over time. There are now some very good computer modeling tools—such as Stella (Rober...

The debate between the theory-theory and simulation has largely ignored issues of cognitive architecture. In the philosophy of psychology, cognition as symbol manipulation is the orthodoxy. The challenge from connectionism, however, has attracted vigorous and renewed interest. In this paper I adopt connectionism as the antecedent of a conditional: If connectionism is the correct account of cogn...