A connectionist and a traditional AI quantizer, symbolic versus sub-symbolic models of rhythm perception

Abstract

The Symbolic AI paradigm and the Connectionist paradigm have produced some incompatible models of the same domain of cognition. Two such models in the field of rhythm perception, namely the Longuet-Higgins Musical Parser and the Desain & Honing connectionist quantizer, were studied in order to find ways to compare and evaluate them. Different perspectives from which to describe their behavior were developed, providing a conceptual as well as a visual representation of the operation of the models. With these tools it proved possible to discuss their similarities and differences and to narrow the gap between sub-symbolic and symbolic models.