Connectionist Selectionism: A Case Study of Parity

There is a general view that instructionist and selectionist theories of adapting to an environment are mutually incompatible [1-4]. Below, we report the results of a series of computer simulations that demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case. Our simulations show that the main ideas of selectionism can be incorporated into a standard instructionist framework, which can benefit both perspectives. Keywords— Instructionism, Selectionism, PDP networks, Parity, Networks of value units

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