Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-11T21:46:14.434Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Author's Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2003

Patricia M. Greenfield
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 greenfield@psych.ucla.edu http://www.psych.ucla/Faculty/Greenfield
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Ronan Reilly's connectionist simulation both strengthens and advances the theoretical model presented in my 1991 target article, “Language, Tools, and Brain: The Ontogeny and Phylogeny of Hierarchically Organized Sequential Behavior.” Reilly has tested the whole ontogenetic model with a single simulation study explicitly planned for this purpose. His methodology has established that the various components of the theoretical model imply and are compatible with one another. It has also indicated how learning can actualize a pre-established ontogenetic sequence of combining lingusitic symbols and objects. His simulation suggests that the acquisition of linguistic speech may be facilitated by experience with object manipulation, but not vice versa. This hypothesis can and should be empirically tested through research on behavioral development in the two domains. Finally, Reilly has simulated brain architecture, as well as neural learning. His simulation therefore shows how the development of language and object manipulation can result from an interaction between preprogrammed neural architecture (analogous to network architecture) and experience (analogous to the network's training cycles).

Type
Author's Response
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press