Navigation and Cognition in Semantic Networks

Borge-Holthoefer, J. ; Arenas, A.

Resumen: Semantic memory is the cognitive system devoted to storage and retrieval of conceptual knowledge. Empirical data indicate that semantic memory is organized in a network structure. Everyday experience shows that word search and retrieval processes emerge providing fluent and coherent speech, i.e. are efficient and robust. Nonetheless, links between pairs of words in semantic memory encode a rich variety of relationships, and not merely category membership. To extract this information, we schematize a process based on uncorrelated random walks from node to node, which converge to a feature vectors network. This mechanism forces the emergence of semantic similarity, which implicitly encloses category structure. Interestingly, the degradation of the original structure has a dramatic impact on the topology of semantic network, whereas the dynamics upon it evidence much higher resilience. We define this problem in the framework of percolation theory.

Idioma: Inglés

Año: 2011

Publicado en: International Journal of Complex Systems in Science 1 (2011), 69-72
ISSN: 2174-6036

Originalmente disponible en: Texto completo de la revista

Tipo y forma: Article (Published version)