STIMULUS EQUIVALENCE AND CONNECTIONISM - IMPLICATIONS FOR BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE

Recent developments in behavior analysis and cognitive science can be used to improve the uneasy relationship between these two approaches to psychological inquiry. Stimulus equivalence phenomena demonstrate the power of behavior analytic procedures to induce complex generative performances that are typically studied by cognitive scientists, while connectionism challenges the previously dominant symbol-based accounts of cognition and emphasizes the importance of environmental constraints and fundamental principles of learning as accounts of cognitive processing. The nature and possible contribution of stimulus equivalence to cognitive science are outlined, and connectionist simulations of complex equivalence phenomena are described. These simulations provide a possible rapprochement between behavior analysis and cognitive science.