Beyond Connectionism: Rethinking the Nature of Learning. All animals, including people, learn how to predict or control important events based on prior experience with cues or actions that precede tho

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Beyond Connectionism: Rethinking the Nature of Learning. All animals, including people, learn how to predict or control important events based on prior experience with cues or actions that precede those events. But how do animals learn these relations, and how does that learning affect behaviour? The current project moves beyond the century-old view, still at the heart of modern AI, that learning is just the strengthening of connections. It describes learning and responding within the formal mathematical framework of Information Theory, objectively quantifying how much information can be learned and how much certainty the learner can have about the outcome. This will refocus our understanding of what learning is and provide new insights into how the learner’s experience shapes their learning.. Scheme: Discovery Projects. Field: 5202 - Biological Psychology. Lead: Prof Justin Harris