SSCC TD: a serial and simultaneous configural-cue compound stimuli representation for temporal difference learning.

Esther Mondragón,Jonathan Gray,Charlotte Bonardi,Eduardo Alonso,Dómhnall J Jennings

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0102469

Esther Mondragón, Jonathan Gray + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102469

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Abstract

This paper presents a novel representational framework for the Temporal Difference (TD) model of learning, which allows the computation of configural stimuli – cumulative compounds of stimuli that generate perceptual emergents known as configural cues. This Simultaneous and Serial Configural-cue Compound Stimuli Temporal Difference model (SSCC TD) can model both simultaneous and serial stimulus compounds, as well as compounds including the experimental context. This modification significantly broadens the range of phenomena which the TD paradigm can explain, and allows it to predict phenomena which traditional TD solutions cannot, particularly effects that depend on compound stimuli functioning as a whole, such as pattern learning and serial structural discriminations, and context-related effects.

Highlights

Classical conditioning is a fundamental associative paradigm in which repeated co-occurrence of two initially unrelated stimuli results in the acquisition of a new pattern of behavior, commonly assumed to result from the formation of a link between the stimuli’s mental representations
In this paper we present an extension to the Temporal Difference model, the Simultaneous and Serial Configural-cue Compound stimuli Temporal Difference model (SSCC TD ), which incorporates a representation for compound stimuli that includes the notion of configural cue – a kind of perceptual emergent unique to a given combination of elements – which acquires and competes with other cues to obtain associative strength like an orthodox stimulus [13,14]
In what follows we present a series of simulations of prototypical experimental results that exemplify fundamental and well-established classical conditioning phenomena as well as new phenomena for which the SSCC TD representational architecture, with simultaneous and serial stimulus configurations and a real time framework, is required; highlighting the capabilities of the SSCC TD model

Summary

Introduction

Classical conditioning is a fundamental associative paradigm in which repeated co-occurrence of two initially unrelated stimuli results in the acquisition of a new pattern of behavior, commonly assumed to result from the formation of a link (or association) between the stimuli’s mental representations. It often involves pairing an originally neutral stimulus (e.g., a tone), and a stimulus that is biologically relevant, the unconditioned stimulus (US), or reinforcer (+).

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