ABSTRACT
One difficulty in writing a chapter such as this is th a t connectionism has become a very broad and poorly defined term. In its inclusive form connectionism includes work in neurophysiology, operations research and engineering, parallel com puter architectures, cognitive science, and m athem atical network models. This chapter does not a ttem pt to provide any sort of comprehensive overview of the field.1 Instead, we identify some common features of connectionist models and examine how our model compares. We also examine some specific examples of connectionist systems aimed a t solving problems similar to those SCRAPS faces.
