Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction: the what, how and why of developmental change: the emergence of a new paradigm
- 1 Mind, intelligence and development: a cognitive, differential and developmental theory of intelligence
- 2 Types of cognitive change: a dynamical, connectionist account
- 3 Developmental patterns in proportional reasoning
- 4 Building general knowledge and skill: cognition and microdevelopment in science learning
- 5 Cognitive change as strategy change
- 6 The emergence of mind in the emotional brain
- 7 Practices of quantification from a socio-cultural perspective
- 8 Contributions of central conceptual structure theory to education
- 9 Accelerating the development of general cognitive processing
- 10 Dealing with change: manifestations, measurements and methods
- 11 Dynamic modelling of cognitive development: time, situatedness and variability
- 12 Modelling individual differences in change through latent variable growth and mixture growth modelling: basic principles and empirical examples
- Index
- References
2 - Types of cognitive change: a dynamical, connectionist account
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface and acknowledgements
- Introduction: the what, how and why of developmental change: the emergence of a new paradigm
- 1 Mind, intelligence and development: a cognitive, differential and developmental theory of intelligence
- 2 Types of cognitive change: a dynamical, connectionist account
- 3 Developmental patterns in proportional reasoning
- 4 Building general knowledge and skill: cognition and microdevelopment in science learning
- 5 Cognitive change as strategy change
- 6 The emergence of mind in the emotional brain
- 7 Practices of quantification from a socio-cultural perspective
- 8 Contributions of central conceptual structure theory to education
- 9 Accelerating the development of general cognitive processing
- 10 Dealing with change: manifestations, measurements and methods
- 11 Dynamic modelling of cognitive development: time, situatedness and variability
- 12 Modelling individual differences in change through latent variable growth and mixture growth modelling: basic principles and empirical examples
- Index
- References
Summary
In this chapter we offer a dynamical account of types of conceptual change both at the cognitive and the mathematical level. Our aim is to show that some classes of neural models can implement the types of change that we have proposed elsewhere. First, we introduce certain types of change that purport to account for the kinds of conceptual change observed in human development. These types are first described at the cognitive level. In the second part of the chapter, we discuss the mathematical/representational level realizations of the cognitive level representations and we claim that the latter can be depicted as points in the system's activational landscape. The concepts of attractors and basins of attraction are introduced and their role is discussed. Our guide in developing our account is the dynamical connectionist theory. In the third part of the chapter we offer a dynamical account of the types of change and we claim that, at this level, conceptual change can be modelled as a process of modification, appearance and disappearance of attractors and/or basins of attraction that shape the system's landscape. Finally, we discuss the kinds of mechanisms at the representational level that could produce the types of change observed at the cognitive level and modelled by means of dynamic connectionism.
Levels in the analysis of the mechanisms of change
Conceptual change can be accounted for at various levels of explanation. We distinguish here the cognitive, the representational and the level of the functional architecture.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cognitive Developmental ChangeTheories, Models and Measurement, pp. 74 - 117Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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