CogSci 131

Discovering mental representations

Tom Griffiths

Modeling similarity
Can we come up with a formal account
of what makes two things similar?
Two approaches
spaces (Shepard)
features (Tversky)

Outline
Spaces, trees, and features
Break
Computing with spaces and features

Color

(Newton, 1704)

(Goethe, 1810)

(CIE, 1931)

Mental structures from behavior

How can we study mental structures?
the key to the cognitive revolution

Chomsky: test the capacity of formal systems

Shepard: measure time and similarity
mental rotation
methods for inferring structure from similarity

Representations from similarity

People are willing to assess similarities

(or produce confusion errors, reaction times)

What structures underlie those judgments?

spaces, trees, and features

Relevant to computer science and statistics

Multidimensional scaling (MDS)

Similarities reflect distance in underlying space
j

sij = f (dij )
MDS
i

sij

Similarity matrix

Psychological space

Psychological similarity

Shepards universal law

S(a,b) = ed (a,b )

Distance in psychological space

similarity decreases
exponentially with
distance in
psychological space

Classical (metric) MDS

1. Obtain a set of distances
(by making assumptions about f)

2. Attempt to reconstruct distances exactly

find low-dimensional location for each point that
minimizes difference between true distances and
distances in the low-dimensional space
has a closed-form, global solution
(we might discuss it later)

Classical (metric) MDS

Great for cases where distances are known
e.g. maps from mileage

Bad when distances are not known or trusted

e.g. from similarities (strong assumptions on f)

Nonmetric MDS
1. Obtain an ordered list of distances
2. Attempt to reconstruct ordering
find low-dimensional location for each point that
minimizes a measure of discrepancy in ordering
only has numerical, local solutions
(no nice math)

Minimizing stress
$ (d d )
ij
& i, j ij
S=%
2
d

&
ij
i, j
'

where

1/ 2

(
&
)
&
*

dij is distance in low-dimensional space

is closest approximation matching order

d
ij

Algorithm:
1. Find best d ij for current dij

2. Minimize S by gradient descent on positions

Gradient descent
y
f
<0
x

f(x)

f
>0
x

f
=0
x

new

f
= x
x

( sets rate of descent)

Simple algorithm for finding a minimum:

move in a direction where y decreases
stop if no such direction exists

Nonmetric MDS with similarities

Makes a weaker assumption about relationship
of similarities and distances (just monotonicity)

MDS

Psychological similarity

Shepards universal law

S(a,b) = ed (a,b )

Distance in psychological space

similarity decreases
exponentially with
distance in
psychological space

Musical intervals

Music

Hierarchies

How can we learn these representations?

Hierarchical clustering
grouping objects together
in a way that forms a hierarchy

Representing hierarchies
Dendrogram
represents distances in
the form of a tree

Identifies clusterings of
objects in a hierarchy
distance from ga to da
distance from da to pa
structured representation

Representing hierarchies

Hierarchical clustering algorithms

Agglomerative clustering:
cluster closest pairs
Distance to clusters specified by linkage function
e.g., distance to nearest point, distance to centroid
(some arguments exist for why these are sensible)

Animals

Break

Up next:
Computing with spaces and features

Additive clustering
wood

metal

table

chair

What features do objects possess?

Tverskys contrast model

A-B
AB

a
b

B-A

S(a,b) = f (A B) f (A B) f (B A)
common
features

distinctive
features of a

distinctive
features of b

A: set of features of a
B: set of features of b
f: function from sets to numbers (typically additive)
, , : free parameters, all 0

Additive clustering
Model similarity judgments directly:

sij = w k f ik f jk
k

where

sij similarity between i and j

wk weight of feature k
fik whether object i has feature k
(1 if yes, 0 if no)

Additive clustering
sij = w k f ik f jk
k

S = FWF

Additive clustering

Additive clustering

Additive clustering

Additive clustering

Representations in minds,
brains, and machines

(Kriegeskorte, Mur, & Bandeti, 2008)

(Mur et al., 2013)

(Mur et al., 2013)

(Mur et al., 2013)

Representations from similarity

Many different kinds of representations can
be identified from similarity data
spaces, trees, and features

Lots of open questions

how do people decide which structure is best?
how should people be deciding?

Still room for better algorithms

MDS and additive clustering algorithms have only
been improved slightly since the 1970s

Spaces and features

Will show up in many contexts in this class
similarity
semantic representation
categorization
neural networks

How can we use these representations?

Representations and problems

Questions about representation apply not just
to algorithms, but at the computational level
how should we formulate computational problems?

The two traditions in representation are more

about how we should construe problems
sets, symbols, rules, discrete, digital
points, dimensions, features, continuous, analog

What if the mind isnt symbolic?

Symbols and rules may just be a convenient
way of describing thought, not how it works
Brains seem quite different from computers in
terms of their capacity to implement symbols
How does symbolic thought come from subsymbolic computation?

Questions
Should we be thinking about computational
problems in terms of symbols or spaces?
What are the implications of this difference?
How does it interact with learning?

Thursday
We will talk about some simple models that
compute with spaces and features
models of categorization