Lesioning an attractor network: Investigations of acquired dyslexia.

Abstract

A recurrent connectionist network was trained to output semantic feature vectors when presented with letter strings. When damaged, the network exhibited characteristics that resembled several of the phenomena found in deep dyslexia and semantic-access dyslexia. Damaged networks sometimes settled to the semantic vectors for semantically similar but visually dissimilar words. With severe damage, a forced-choice decision between categories was possible even when the choice of the particular semantic vector within the category was not possible. The damaged networks typically exhibited many mixed visual and semantic errors in which the output corresponded to a word that was both visually and semantically similar. Surprisingly, damage near the output sometimes caused pure visual errors. Indeed, the characteristic error pattern of deep dyslexia occurred with damage to virtually any part of the network.

Cites (4)

1. Learning representations by back-propagating errors
   Rumelhart, David E., Hinton, Geoffrey E., Williams, Ronald J. · 1986 · Nature
2. From Neuropsychology to Mental Structure
   Shallice, Tim · 1988
3. Non-Holographic Associative Memory
   WILLSHAW, D. J., BUNEMAN, O. P., LONGUET-HIGGINS, H. C. · 1969 · Nature
4. A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound, and reading
   van Orden, Guy C. · 1987 · Memory & Cognition

Show all 4 references

Cited by (18)

1. Understanding normal and impaired word reading: Computational principles in quasi-regular domains.
   Plaut, David C., McClelland, James L., Seidenberg, Mark S., Patterson, Karalyn · 1996 · Psychological Review
2. The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution
   MacDonald, Maryellen C., Pearlmutter, Neal J., Seidenberg, Mark S. · 1994 · Psychological Review
3. The time course of perceptual choice: The leaky, competing accumulator model.
   Usher, Marius, McClelland, James L. · 2001 · Psychological Review
4. From single to multiple deficit models of developmental disorders
   PENNINGTON, B · 2006 · Cognition
5. Phonology, reading acquisition, and dyslexia: Insights from connectionist models.
   Harm, Michael W., Seidenberg, Mark S. · 1999 · Psychological Review

See all 656