Causal explanation as constraint satisfaction : A critique and a feedforward connectionist alternative

S. J. Read and A. Marcus-Newhall (1993) proposed that constraint satisfaction connectionist models can account for four principles of coherence that underlie social explanation. However, it is argued that the specific implementation they used (ECHO; P. Thagard, 1992) has several important shortcomings. ECHO fails to be sensitive to covariation that is crucial to causality, it does not learn from experience, and it cannot deal efficiently with conjunctions of explanations. To remedy these shortcomings, the author presents an alternative feedforward connectionist model that prior research has shown to be susceptible to the classical attribution principles of covariation. discounting, and augmentation. By running novel simulations of Read and Marcus-Newhall's data, the author demonstrated that this feedforward model is also capable of simulating the four principles of coherence.

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