Rethinking Innateness
Subtitle: A Connectionist Perspective on Development (Neural Networks and Connectionist Modeling)
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: October 15, 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 450
ISBN-13: 9780262050524
Subjects: Behavioural theory (Behaviourism); Cognition & cognitive psychology; Behavior; Interpersonal Relations; Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Neuropsychology; Psychology & Psychiatry / Cognitive Psychology; Connectionism; Nativism (Psychology); Nature and nurture
First sentence: Things change. When things changed in a positive direction (i.e., more differentiation, more organization, and usually ensuring better outcomes), we call that change "development."
Description: Rethinking Innateness asks the question, "What does it really mean to say that a behavior is innate?" The authors describe a new framework in which interactions, occurring at all levels, give rise to emergent forms and behaviors. These outcomes often may be highly constrained and universal, yet they are not themselves directly contained in the genes in any domain-specific way.

One of the key contributions of Rethinking Innateness is a taxonomy of ways in which a behavior can be innate. These include constraints at the level of representation, architecture, and timing; typically, behaviors arise through the interaction of constraints at several of these levels.

The ideas are explored through dynamic models inspired by a new kind of "developmental connectionism," a marriage of connectionist models and developmental neurobiology, forming a new theoretical framework for the study of behavioral development. While relying heavily on the conceptual and computational tools provided by connectionism, Rethinking Innateness also identifies ways in which these tools need to be enriched by closer attention to biology.