Open-ended learning allows humans and robots to autonomously acquire an increasingly large repertoire of skills, that later can allow them to produce suitable actions to achieve desirable effects in the environment ('goals'). Empirical evidence from developmental psychology suggests that a pivotal mechanism possibly driving open-ended learning is represented by actionoutcome contingencies. Here we propose a specific hypothesis, expressed in the form of a blueprint cognitive architecture, that sketches the general mechanisms through which contingency-based open-ended learning might take place. According to this hypothesis, the matching (or distance) between a desired goal and the actual effect produced by the action can be used to drive the learning of both the motor skill used to accomplish the goal and the internal representation of the action outcome. We report here a computational model that implements the hypothesis and we illustrate two developmental psychology experiments related to the presented theory. Overall the model and experiments show the soundness of the hypothesis and represent a start towards validating it experimentally.
Working Memory (WM), the ability to maintain information in service to a task, is characterized by its limited capacity. Several influential models attribute this limitation in a large extent to proactive interference (Anderson & Neely, 1996;Bunting, 2006;Kane & Engle, 2000), the phenomenon that previously encoded, now-irrelevant information competes with relevant information (Keppel & Underwood, 1963). Here, we look back at the adult PI literature, spanning over sixty years, as well as recent results linking the ability to cope with PI to WM capacity (Endress & Potter, 2014;Kane & Engle, 2000). In early development, WM capacity is even more limited (Kaldy & Leslie, 2005;Simmering, 2012), yet an accounting for the role of PI has been lacking. Our Focus Article aims to address this through an integrative account: since PI resolution is mediated by networks involving the frontal cortex (particularly, the left inferior frontal gyrus) and the posterior parietal cortex (Badre & Wagner, 2005;Jonides & Nee, 2006), and since children have protracted development and less recruitment (Crone et al., 2006) of these areas, the increase in the ability to cope with PI (Kail, 2002; De Visscher & Noel, 2014) is a major factor underlying the increase in WM capacity in early development. Given this, we suggest that future research should focus on mechanistic studies of PI resolution in children. Finally, we note a crucial methodological implication: typical WM paradigms repeat stimuli from trial-to-trial, facilitating, inadvertently, PI and reducing performance; we may be fundamentally underestimating children's WM capacity.
Working Memory (WM), the ability to maintain information in service to a task, is characterized by its limited capacity. Several influential models attribute this limitation in a large extent to proactive interference (Anderson & Neely, 1996; Bunting, 2006; Kane & Engle, 2000), the phenomenon that previously encoded, now-irrelevant information competes with relevant information (Keppel & Underwood, 1963). Here, we look back at the adult PI literature, spanning over sixty years, as well as recent results linking the ability to cope with PI to WM capacity (Endress & Potter, 2014; Kane & Engle, 2000). In early development, WM capacity is even more limited (Kaldy & Leslie, 2005; Simmering, 2012), yet an accounting for the role of PI has been lacking. Our Focus Article aims to address this through an integrative account: since PI resolution is mediated by networks involving the frontal cortex (particularly, the left inferior frontal gyrus) and the posterior parietal cortex (Badre & Wagner, 2005; Jonides & Nee, 2006), and since children have protracted development and less recruitment (Crone et al., 2006) of these areas, the increase in the ability to cope with PI (Kail, 2002; De Visscher & Noel, 2014) is a major factor underlying the increase in WM capacity in early development. Given this, we suggest that future research should focus on mechanistic studies of PI resolution in children. Finally, we note a crucial methodological implication: typical WM paradigms repeat stimuli from trial-to-trial, facilitating, inadvertently, PI and reducing performance; we may be fundamentally underestimating children’s WM capacity.
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