Department of Computer Sciences:
Purdue University Press eBooks · 2019
We examine online learning in the context of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), a task for which the concept acquisition strategies for human and other primates are well documented.We describe a new WCST experiment in rhesus monkeys, comparing the monkeys' behaviors to that of online learning algorithms.Our expectation is that insights gained from this work and future research can lead to improved artificial learning systems. WCST as Online LearningOnline learning (Blum 1998;Kivinen, Smola, and Williamson 2004) assumes that an adversary provides data sequentially to a learner.In particular, the adversary can change the target concept at any time (called a concept drift), unbeknownst to the learner.This is in sharp contrast to the stationary independent and identically-distributed (iid) data assumption in standard learning models.As such, online learning naturally models changing environments.An interesting question is how intelligent animals learn under similar conditions -the real world certainly has concept drifts, and experiences arrive sequentially.In order to study learning in natural and artificial systems, we connect the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST), a well-known neuropsychological test for humans (Milner 1963) and other primates (Nakahara et al. 2002), to online learning algorithms.While the WCST has been studied computationally before at the neurological level (Dehaene and Changeux 1991), we believe this study is the first to address the connection between online learning in primates and learning algorithms.Understanding how monkeys and people approach this game allows us to explore to what degree they employ similar strategies.Studying high level cross-species cognition provides insight into the origins and primitives of abstract reasoning, which is fundamental to modeling it computationally.The WCST tests for cognitive "set shifting" (i.e. the readiness to abandon an old learned concept after a concept drift), which is difficult for human patients with pathology in the frontal lobes of the brain.We describe a simplified WCST for rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta), see figure below.In