Introduction
The modern understanding of biological cognition has been heavily influenced by the computer metaphor or the idea that cognitive processes can be construed in terms of information processing. This idea was conceived in the early 1950s of the twentieth century when it was realized that the inventory of newly discovered digital computers provides a powerful framework for understanding the mind. Cognitive scientists readily grasped the idea that performance in tasks such as problem solving or visual object recognition can be described by drafting an algorithm of a series of distinct computations operating on well-defined data structures. The advantage of this approach was that it allowed the development of formal theories of cognition and the generation of testable predictions about behavior. However, it was soon realized that there are aspects of cognition which are hard to be accounted for in this manner. For example, the high granularity of the computer-inspired operations...
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Vankov, I. (2021). Parallel Distributed Processing. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_738-1
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