Page 271 - Deep Learning

254 Adaptation

this chapter generalizes Wiener’s idea to cases in which the deviation must be
described in qualitative terms. Constraints provide the expectations against
which the observed outcomes are compared, and the specialization process
translates a deviation between expectation and observation – a constraint vio-
lation – into a revision of the learner’s knowledge about how to perform the
task at hand. This theory may or may not turn out to be psychologically accu-
rate, but any explanation of learning from errors requires a cognitive mecha-
nism that operates on the information that resides in the difference between
expected and observed outcomes, Wiener’s enduring contribution to the study
of cognition.