Christiansen grammar evolution for the modelling of psychological processes

Abstract

This is an electronic version of the paper presented at the International Industrial Simulation Conference (ISC 2007), held in Delft (The Netherlands)Psychologists have developed models of associative learning for more than 30 years. Despite the strong efforts made, they still suffer many shortcomings. We have tried to build an integral model of habituation, the simplest type of learning within the area of associative learning and the basic support for other types. To overcome the deficiencies of traditional models, we have made used of Christiansen Grammar Evolution. This evolutionary technique is capable of automatically search for a target expression (the model) in a given formal language (the formalism of the model). Under this perspective, that we call Automatic Modelling, we have found models of habituation with interesting characteristics.This work has been partially sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (MEC), project number TSI2005-08225- C07-06