Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

A cognitive model for learning associations between words and objects is presented. We first list basic constraints to which the model must adhere. The constraints arise from two sources. First they stem from observed psychological phenomena including typicality effects, extension errors observed from children and belief-dependent behavior. Secondly they arise from our choice to integrate the model in a unified theory of cognition. In presenting the constraints to the model's construction, w e motivate our design decisions while describing our algorithm that takes a symbolic, production-based approach. The model's adherence to the constraints is further supported by some empirical results.