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From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Old AI (was: Re: Some Sequence Prediction Work (actually, synthesis of regexprs))
Message-ID: <12043@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 8 Dec 89 03:12:37 GMT
References: <11883@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <5234@bgsuvax.UUCP> <7200@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <11988@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <7247@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 55

In article <7247@pt.cs.cmu.edu> valdes@b.gp.cs.cmu.edu (Raul Valdes-Perez) writes:
;In article <11988@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes:
;>I went through Simon & Kotovsky ...
;>they contend that what happens in the mind must be similar to their program.
;
;I wish you would cite sentences that support this statement.  As I recall,
;Simon & Kotovsky provide a model for an empirical phenomenon, compare its
;behavior and predictions with observations, and conclude that there is
;evidence for believing that the model veridically accounts for the mental
;mechanisms involved.  This sounds pretty unobjectionable, being what many,
;many empirical scientists do, schematically speaking.

They say that the sequence "urtustuttu" could be coded as follows (they
spell out the algorithm, I've coded it to make it easier to read ---
how things do change):

(defvar *alphabet* '(r s t [etc, a circular list]))

(defun produce-the-sequence-urtustuttu ()
  (let ((immediate-memory (pop *alphabet*)))   ;; step 1
    (loop                                      ;; step 6 
      (print 'u)                               ;; step 2
      (print immediate-memory)                 ;; step 3
      (setq immediate-memory (pop *alphabet*)) ;; step 4
      (print 't))))                            ;; step 5

This is exactly the sequence of events they give. (Step 6 should really be a
go statement at the end, but I couldn't bear to write it that way.)

They then write:

"We postulate: (italics) normal adult beings have stored in memory a 
program capable of interpreting and executing descriptions of serial
patterns. In its essential structure, the program is like the one we have 
just described. (end italics)

"Our main evidence for these assertions is that the program we have written,
containing the mechanisms and processes we have described, is in fact
capable of generating and extrapolating letter series from stored 
descriptions. We are not aware that any alternative mechanism has been
hypothesized capable of doing this. Further, the basic processes incorporated
in the program are processes that have already been shown to be efficacious
in simulating human problem solving and memorizing behavior." (pp 539-540)

--Simon & Kotovsky (1963), "Human Acquistion of Concepts for Sequential
Patterns," Psychological Review, Vol. 70, No. 6

They did, as you indicate, match the performance of the extrapolation
algorithm with human performance, but there the problems are basically
the same. At the point in the article from which I've taken the quote,
they haven't discussed the extrap. alg. yet.

So what's wrong with this argument? Opinions?

--eliot