Timescales of Change in Connectionist and Dynamical Systems Approaches to Learning and Development

Abstract

This chapter examines the origins of the construct of timescales as expressed in Waddington's (1957) metaphor for development of the epigenetic landscape, and its subsequent use as a metaphor for change in learning/development in theoretical frameworks, both connectionist and dynamical systems. It presents an epigenetic landscape model for motor learning and development, which is constructed as a low-dimensional approximation of a high-dimensional (or infinitely dimensional) complex dynamical system that possesses a score, error, or fitness function. The chapter concludes by illustrating briefly three case studies of the timescales of change in the epigenetic landscape framework to motor learning and development.