Parallel models of serial behaviour: Lashley revisited.

Abstract

In 1951, Lashley highlighted the importance of serial order for the brain and behavioural sciences. He considered the response chaining account untenable and proposed an alternative employing parallel response activation and schemata for Subsequently, much has been learned about sequential behaviour, particularly in the linguistic domain. We argue that these developments support Lashley's picture, and recent computational models compatible with it are described. The models are developed in a series of steps, beginning with the basic problem of parallel response competition and its possible resolution into serial action. At each stage, important limitations of the previous models are identified and simple additions proposed to overcome them, including the provision of learning mechanisms. Each type of model is compared with relevant data, and the importance of error data is emphasized. Taken together, the models constitute a unified approach to serial order which has achieved considerable explanatory success across disparate domains.