The Evolution

The Evolution
10

Note also that the concepts of part-whole and whole-to-whole
linking are similar to the concepts of chunking (Miller, 1956), ver-
tical versus horizontal linking (Anderson & Bower, 1973; Estes, 1972;
Johnson, 1972; Wickelgren, 1976a, 1976b, 1977, pp. 18-27, 243-247,
251), configuring (Razran, 1971), and unitization (Hayes-Roth, 1977;
Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1981). Actually the concepts of part-whole
and whole-to-whole linking will not be the basic building blocks of
the theory offered here. After all, if a concept A yields B, what is
really accomplished by simply attributing that yielding to one type of
link or another? Instead this paper will go a step further by analyz-
ing how these links would interact with one another if human semantic
memory evolved so as to maximize its ability to anticipate and disam-
biguate (this type of memory will henceforth be referred to as an
optimized memory). In the course of doing this the properties of
partwhole and whole-to-whole links will be further defined. The above
definitions are, therefore, incomplete.

Using Two Sources of Statistical Information

Once one accepts the idea that memory makes use of more than one
type of link, than the question inevitably arises as to what happens
when more than one set of links is activated at a time.

Since two types of links are used here, there are three types of
situations that may arise. Two sets of part-whole links may be acti-

<<   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   >>

More intriguing information