Are feedforward and recurrent networks systematic? Analysis and implications for a connectionist cognitive architecture

Abstract

Human cognition is said to be systematic: cognitive ability generalizes to structurally related behaviours. The connectionist approach to cognitive theorizing has been strongly criticized for its failure to explain systematicity. Demonstrations of generalization notwithstanding, I show that two widely used networks (feedforward and recurrent) do not support systematicity under the condition of local input/output representations. For a connectionist explanation of systematicity, these results leave two choices: either (1) develop models capable of systematicity under local input/output representations or (2) justify the choice of similarity-based (non-local) component representations sufficient for systematicity.