Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2008 - Volume 31, Issue 04  

Open Peer Commentary

Computational complexity analysis can help, but first we need a theory

Todd Warehama1, Iris van Rooija2 and Moritz Müllera3

a1 Department of Computer Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, NL, A1B 3X5, Canada

a2 Nijmegen Institute for Cognition and Information, Radboud University Nijmegen, 6525HR Nijmegen, The Netherlands

a3 Department of Mathematics, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, 79098 Freiburg, Germany harold@cs.mun.ca http://www.cs.mun.ca/~harold i.vanrooij@nici.ru.nl http://www.nici.ru.nl/~irisvr/ moritz.mueller@math.uni-freiburg.de http://home.mathematik.uni-freiburg.de/mueller/home.html

Abstract

Leech et al. present a connectionist algorithm as a model of (the development) of analogizing, but they do not specify the algorithm's associated computational-level theory, nor its computational complexity. We argue that doing so may be essential for connectionist cognitive models to have full explanatory power and transparency, as well as for assessing their scalability to real-world input domains.

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