Acquisition Of Rules Research Articles

Neural Correlates for the Acquisition of Natural Language Syntax

Some types of simple and logically possible syntactic rule never occur in human language grammars, leading to a distinction between grammatical and nongrammatical syntactic rules. Comparison of the neuroanatomical correlates underlying the acquisition of grammatical and nongrammatical rules can provide relevant evidence on the neural processes dedicated to language acquisition in a given developmental stage. Until present no direct evidence on the neural mechanisms subserving language acquisition at any developmental stage has been supplied. We used fMRI in investigating the acquisition of grammatical and nongrammatical rules in the specified sense in 14 healthy adults. Grammatical rules compared with nongrammatical rules specifically activated a left hemispheric network including Broca's area, as shown by direct comparisons between the two rule types. The selective role of Broca's area was further confirmed by time × condition interactions and by proficiency effects, in that higher proficiency in grammatical rule usage, but not in usage of nongrammatical rules, led to higher levels of activation in this area. These findings provide evidence for the neural mechanisms underlying language acquisition in adults.

A structure identification method of submodels for hierarchical fuzzy modeling using the multiple objective genetic algorithm

Fuzzy models describe nonlinear input-output relationships with linguistic fuzzy rules. A hierarchical fuzzy modeling is promising for identification of fuzzy models of target systems that have many input variables. In the identification, (1) determination of a hierarchical structure of submodels, (2) selection of input variables of each submodel, (3) division of input and output space, (4) tuning of membership functions, and (5) determination of fuzzy inference method are carried out. This article presents a hierarchical fuzzy modeling method with an uneven division method of input space of each submodel. For selecting input variables of submodels, the multiple objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) is utilized. MOGA finds multiple models with different input variables and different numbers of fuzzy rules as compromising solutions. A human designer can choose desirable ones from these candidates. The proposed method is applied to acquisition of fuzzy rules from cyclists' pedaling data. In spite of a small number of data, the obtained model was able to give detailed suggestions to each cyclist. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Interlingua-based English–Korean Two-way Speech Translation of Doctor–Patient Dialogues with CCLINC

Development of a robust two-way real-time speech translation system exposes researchers and system developers to various challenges of machine translation (MT) and spoken language dialogues. The need for communicating in at least two different languages poses problems not present for a monolingual spoken language dialogue system, where no MT engine is embedded within the process flow. Integration of various component modules for real-time operation poses challenges not present for text translation. In this paper, we present the CCLINC (Common Coalition Language System at Lincoln Laboratory) English–Korean two-way speech translation system prototype trained on doctor–patient dialogues, which integrates various techniques to tackle the challenges of automatic real-time speech translation. Key features of the system include (i) language–independent meaning representation which preserves the hierarchical predicate–argument structure of an input utterance, providing a powerful mechanism for discourse understanding of utterances originating from different languages, word-sense disambiguation and generation of various word orders of many languages, (ii) adoption of the DARPA Communicator architecture, a plug-and-play distributed system architecture which facilitates integration of component modules and system operation in real time, and (iii) automatic acquisition of grammar rules and lexicons for easy porting of the system to different languages and domains. We describe these features in detail and present experimental results.

408 スケジューリング・ルールの獲得に対する行動ネットワークの構築

This paper proposes a method for construction of the state-action network for scheduling rule acquisition. The state-action network, which can be obtained through a problem solving process of a scheduler, consists of states describing some phases of the problem solving process and actions of scheduler in each phase. Moreover, a reinforcement learning method is used to refine the obtained state-action-network. We apply this approach to single machine problems and demonstarate its appliability through computational simulations.

Reinforcement Learning with Autonomous Segmentation for Continuous State and Action Spaces

One of major research topics for behavior-based AI is to construct an appropriate sensor-motor, relation for an autonomous moving robot in an embedded environment, hopefully, with less preliminary setting by an autonomous robot designer. This paper proposes a new reinforcement learning algorithm, which is called the Continuous Space Classifier Generator (CSCG), for this problem. The major attraction of CSCG is that the state space and the action space of a learning agent are segmented simultaneously with the process of its behavior rule acquisition in the embedded environment. This means that a robot designer can be released from the segmentation of those two spaces, which is often crucial to the success of reinforcement learning. After showing the detail of CSCG, not only computer simulations but also experiments using a small real robot are conducted in order to illustrate the learning process of the proposed method.

Anterior prefrontal cortex mediates rule learning in humans.

Despite a need for rule learning in everyday life, the brain regions involved in explicit rule induction remain undetermined. Here we use event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure learning-dependent neuronal responses during an explicit categorization task. Subjects made category decisions, with feedback, to exemplar letter strings for which the rule governing category membership was periodically changed. Bilateral fronto-polar prefrontal cortices were selectively engaged following rule change. This activation pattern declined with improving task performance reflecting rule acquisition. The vocabulary of letters comprising the exemplars was also periodically changed, independently of rule changes. This exemplar change modulated activation in left anterior hippocampus. Our finding that fronto-polar cortex mediates rule learning supports a functional contribution of this region to generic reasoning and problem-solving behaviours.

Differential vowel duration associated with children's word-final fricative deletion.

This study assessed whether 3 children, 5 to 6 years old, who deleted word-final fricatives preserve the voicing contrast for those fricatives by producing dif ferential duration of the preceding vowel. The children's CV syllable productions were compared to their CV(C) syllable productions in which the final consonant was intended but actually deleted. Analysis indicated that all 3 children exhibited significantly longer vowel duration, in CV syllables than in CV(C) syllables. This differential duration of the preceding vowel was shown in both isolation and carrier phrase conditions. Of the 3 children 2 preserved the voicing contrast by showing significantly longer vowels preceding voiced consonants as compared to voiceless consonants. One child did this in both isolation and carrier phrase conditions and the other child did this in isolation only. All 3 children manipulated vowel duration to signify the linguis tic contrast, therefore these findings support a linguistic perspective of speech development which focuses on the acquisition and knowledge of the linguistic rules of the language. In addition, the large amount of variability in vowel duration for CV and CV(C) syllables and the marked variability in performance across children support a biological view of a developing vocal tract undergoing structural and physiological changes.

Transforming paper documents into XML format with WISDOM++

The transformation of scanned paper documents to a form suitable for an Internet browser is a complex process that requires solutions to several problems. The application of an OCR to some parts of the document image is only one of the problems. In fact, the generation of documents in HTML format is easier when the layout structure of a page has been extracted by means of a document analysis process. The adoption of an XML format is even better, since it can facilitate the retrieval of documents in the Web. Nevertheless, an effective transformation of paper documents into this format requires further processing steps, namely document image classification and understanding. WISDOM++ is a document processing system that operates in five steps: document analysis, document classification, document understanding, text recognition with an OCR, and transformation into HTML/XML format. The innovative aspects described in the paper are: the preprocessing algorithm, the adaptive page segmentation, the acquisition of block classification rules using techniques from machine learning, the layout analysis based on general layout principles, and a method that uses document layout information for conversion to HTML/XML formats. A benchmarking of the system components implementing these innovative aspects is reported.

Implicit and explicit rule acquisition: A multimodal imaing (ERP, fMRI) study

Implicit and explicit rule acquisition: A multimodal imaing (ERP, fMRI) study

Behavioural profiles of children and adolescents after pre- or perinatal unilateral brain damage

Recent case reports of individuals with early-onset damage to the prefrontal cortex have suggested that such early insults could result in severely impaired social behaviour in later childhood and adolescence. The investigators speculated that the acquisition of complex social conventions and moral rules had been impaired. In a large cohort of children, we sought to determine whether early focal brain insults might result in clinically significant behavioural or emotional problems. This study reports on 39 children with pre- or perinatal-onset unilateral brain damage (focal lesion) from cerebral infarction or intraparenchymal haemorrhage, using the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist to assess the presence or absence of behavioural and emotional difficulties. Two-thirds of the subjects had left hemisphere (LH) lesions and one-third had right hemisphere (RH) lesions. Age range was 4.0-15.4 years at the time of questionnaire completion. Their results were compared with those of 54 control children. Analyses were conducted on focal lesion versus controls, RH versus LH lesion, frontal versus non-frontal lesion, and seizure versus non-seizure groups. When the effect of IQ was partialled out, there were no significant differences on the nine Behavior Problem scales, the Internalizing-Externalizing dichotomy or the Total Problem score for any of the group comparisons. Our subjects showed no evidence of clinically significant behavioural or emotional problems, even when the frontal lobe was involved. Individuals with more extensive and bilateral damage may be at higher risk of significant behavioural and emotional dysfunction than were those in our study population. In future studies of brain-behaviour relationships in developing children, all potential causes for any observed behavioural abnormalities, such as genetic and environmental factors and toxin exposure, must be considered before concluding that specific anatomical lesions are causally related to specific behavioural outcomes.

Acquisition of proper and universal fuzzy rules by interactive genetic algorithms

Acquisition of proper and universal fuzzy rules by interactive genetic algorithms

事例汎化とニューラルネットによる制約指向型ファジィルールの獲得

事例汎化とニューラルネットによる制約指向型ファジィルールの獲得

The declarative/procedural model of lexicon and grammar.

Our use of language depends upon two capacities: a mental lexicon of memorized words and a mental grammar of rules that underlie the sequential and hierarchical composition of lexical forms into predictably structured larger words, phrases, and sentences. The declarative/procedural model posits that the lexicon/grammar distinction in language is tied to the distinction between two well-studied brain memory systems. On this view, the memorization and use of at least simple words (those with noncompositional, that is, arbitrary form-meaning pairings) depends upon an associative memory of distributed representations that is subserved by temporal-lobe circuits previously implicated in the learning and use of fact and event knowledge. This "declarative memory" system appears to be specialized for learning arbitrarily related information (i.e., for associative binding). In contrast, the acquisition and use of grammatical rules that underlie symbol manipulation is subserved by frontal/basal-ganglia circuits previously implicated in the implicit (nonconscious) learning and expression of motor and cognitive "skills" and "habits" (e.g., from simple motor acts to skilled game playing). This "procedural" system may be specialized for computing sequences. This novel view of lexicon and grammar offers an alternative to the two main competing theoretical frameworks. It shares the perspective of traditional dual-mechanism theories in positing that the mental lexicon and a symbol-manipulating mental grammar are subserved by distinct computational components that may be linked to distinct brain structures. However, it diverges from these theories where they assume components dedicated to each of the two language capacities (that is, domain-specific) and in their common assumption that lexical memory is a rote list of items. Conversely, while it shares with single-mechanism theories the perspective that the two capacities are subserved by domain-independent computational mechanisms, it diverges from them where they link both capacities to a single associative memory system with broad anatomic distribution. The declarative/procedural model, but neither traditional dual- nor single-mechanism models, predicts double dissociations between lexicon and grammar, with associations among associative memory properties, memorized words and facts, and temporal-lobe structures, and among symbol-manipulation properties, grammatical rule products, motor skills, and frontal/basal-ganglia structures. In order to contrast lexicon and grammar while holding other factors constant, we have focused our investigations of the declarative/procedural model on morphologically complex word forms. Morphological transformations that are (largely) unproductive (e.g., in go-went, solemn-solemnity) are hypothesized to depend upon declarative memory. These have been contrasted with morphological transformations that are fully productive (e.g., in walk-walked, happy-happiness), whose computation is posited to be solely dependent upon grammatical rules subserved by the procedural system. Here evidence is presented from studies that use a range of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic approaches with children and adults. It is argued that converging evidence from these studies supports the declarative/procedural model of lexicon and grammar.

Phonological development in 4-6-year-old moderately hearing impaired children.

The acquisition of clear phonological rules is of utmost importance for a child when he/she is learning to decode and convey meanings using spoken language. Fifteen Finnish-speaking children, five normally hearing (NH) 3-year-olds and 10 moderately hearing impaired (HId) 4-6-year-olds were studied here. Speech samples consisting of 62 words were collected from each child during a picture naming task. Frequent phonetic (articulation) errors together with normal (but delayed) and deviant phonological processes of HId children were found in this study. The frequency and quality of the processes seemed to be related more to the grade of HI than, for example, the age of the child. Implications for speech therapy are briefly discussed.

Information Theoretic Competitive Learning and Linguistic Rule Acquisition.

In this paper, we propose a new information theoretic method for competitive learning, and demonstrate that it can discover some linguistic rules in unsupervised ways more explicitly than the traditional competitive method. The new method can directly control competitive unit activation patterns to which input-competitive connections are adjusted. This direct control of the activation patterns permits considerable flexibility for connections, and shows the ability to detect salient features not captured by the traditional competitive method. We applied the new method to a linguistic rule acquisition problem. In this problem, unsupervised methods are needed because children learn rules without any explicit instruction. Our results confirmed that the new method can give similar results as those by the traditional competitive method when input data are appropriately coded. However, we could see that when unnecessary information is given to a network, the new method can filter it out, while the performance of the traditional method is degraded by unnecessary information. Because data in actual cognitive and engineering problems usually contain redundant and unnecessary information, the new method has good potential for discovering regularity in actual problems.

Learning artificial grammars: no evidence for the acquisition of rules.

Two experiments investigated whether there is evidence for acquisition of rules in implicit artificial grammar learning (AGL). Two different methods were used in meeting this goal, multiple regression analysis and analysis of receiver-operating characteristics (ROCs). By means of multiple regression analysis, several types of knowledge were identified that were used in judgments of grammaticality, for example, about single letters and about larger stimulus fragments. There was no evidence for the contribution of rule knowledge. The ROCs were in accord with a similarity-based account of AGL and thus did not support the notion that rule knowledge is acquired in AGL either. Simulations with a connectionist model corroborated the conclusion that the results were in accord with a similarity-based, associative account.

Neural Correlates of Olfactory Recognition Memory in the Rat Orbitofrontal Cortex

The orbitofrontal cortex (OF) is strongly and reciprocally connected with the perirhinal (PR) and entorhinal areas of the medial temporal lobe and plays an important role in odor recognition memory. This study characterized firing patterns of single neurons in the OF of rats performing a continuous odor-guided delayed nonmatch to sample (DNMS) task. Most OF neurons fired in association with one or more task events, including the initiation of trials, the sampling of odor stimuli, and the consumption of rewards. OF neurons also exhibited sustained odor-selective activity during the memory delay, and a large proportion of OF cells had odor-specific enhanced or suppressed responses on stimulus repetition. Most OF neurons were activated during several task events, or associated with complex behavioral states. The incidence of cells that fired in association with the critical match/non-match judgement was increased as the DNMS rule was learned, and was higher in OF than in perirhinal and entorhinal cortex. Furthermore, the classification of match and nonmatch trials was correlated with accuracy in performance of that judgement. These findings are consistent with the view that OF is a high order association cortex that plays a role both in the memory representations for specific stimuli and in the acquisition and application of task rules.

Interactive Real Time Expert System Applied to Hot Rolling Mill

In this work an interactive real time expert system is presented. It has a flexible rule acquisition interface, which allows the process engineer to transfer his knowledge to the system. Furthermore it has a user friendly rule execution interface, which allows the process engineer to verify the veracity of the acquired knowledge. An application of this system for hot strip mill product quality supervision, and sensor validation are described.

Dr. Beers and Colleagues Reply

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Letter to the EditorFull AccessDr. Beers and Colleagues ReplySUE R. BEERS, , PH.D., DAVID R. ROSENBERG, , M.D., and CHRISTOPHER M. RYAN, , PH.D., SUE R. BEERSSearch for more papers by this author, , PH.D., DAVID R. ROSENBERGSearch for more papers by this author, , M.D., and CHRISTOPHER M. RYANSearch for more papers by this author, , PH.D., Pittsburgh, Pa.Published Online:1 Jul 2000https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.157.7.1183AboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail We appreciate the comments on our article by Drs. Savage and Rauch proposing that our null results might be explained by the fact that cognitive abilities dependent on prefrontal function do not develop until later in childhood and, thus, were not apparent at the time of our evaluation of children with OCD. They suggest an emerging deficit in frontal lobe function that mirrors the clinical phenomenology of the illness, noting that the obsessions may not fully develop until frontal lobe processes reach full maturity, sometime after age 12. This is a worthy hypothesis. In a study by Levin and colleagues (1991), healthy older children (ages 13–15 years) showed the expected developmental gains on a measure of verbal fluency and on the Tower of London task (a.k.a. Tower of Hanoi). However, on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and the Go–No-Go task, both of which were also included in our study, children performed at the adult level by age 12. Noting that our group was strikingly similar in age to that of the group of Levin et al. (12.3 years [SD=2.9] versus 11.1 years [SD=1.1], respectively), we do not feel that developmental level itself can explain our null results, especially with respect to the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test.OCD symptoms, even early in the illness, might influence problem-solving efficiency rather than problem-solving accuracy measured within a time limit. A controlled study of adults with OCD (1) demonstrated no between-group differences in number of responses, rate of perseverative responses, and rate of perseverative errors on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. However, OCD patients required significantly more time to respond to each trial and to complete the entire test. Careful consideration suggests that within our group of frontal lobe tests, we can make distinctions between those that were timed but brief and highly structured (e.g., Stroop Color/Word Test, Trail Making Test B, Controlled Oral Word Association test) and those that had no obvious time constraints but required deductive reasoning (e.g., Tower of Hanoi, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test). The latter tests emphasize rule acquisition and the problem-solving process, whereas the former require clearly defined responses (e.g., ink color, alternation between numbers and letters) while inhibiting other clearly defined but inappropriate responses. One explanation for our null results may be that we failed to measure problem-solving efficiency during the completion of unstructured problems that require, among other things, the discovery of rules.Neuroimaging studies have begun to elaborate the structural brain changes associated with OCD in young children. As Drs. Savage and Rauch suggest, it remains for carefully designed longitudinal studies to determine the neuropsychological correlates and functional significance of these brain changes early in the illness and over the course of subsequent development.

Construction of Virtual Reality System for Arm Wrestling with Interactive Evolutional Computing

We developed arm wrestling between users and virtual robots and are working on control rule acquisition. For control human-like rules, we use interactive evolutional computing (EC) in which control rules are interactively acquired by computer and control is calculated by the user arm wrestling with the robot. We evaluated arm wrestling with interactive EC and acquiring human-like rules during virtual arm wrestling.