(outlink) A Brief History of Connectionism

Connectionism, n:

Connectionism -- within cognitive science -- is a theory of information processing. Unlike classical systems which use explicit, often logical, rules arranged in an hierarchy to manipulate symbols in a serial manner, however, connectionist systems rely on parallel processing of sub-symbols, using statistical properties instead of logical rules to transform information. Connectionists base their models upon the known neurophysiology of the brain and attempt to incorporate those functional properties thought to be required for cognition.

A Brief History of Connectionism attempts to go through the theory and place this in context.