Theoretical and practical studies of a competitive learning process

Abstract

We investigate the behaviour of a competitive learning process described by Rumelhart and Zipser. We study its dependence on the parameters of the transformation rule and on the number of stimuli provided as input. Another important factor is the ‘structure’ of the stimulus sequence; in the case when the stimuli are dipoles this can be represented by an undirected graph. We provide some theoretical background for this case, and we report on an extensive series of simulations. The conclusion from both theoretical and practical studies is that the process is not very robust.