English

Behavioral Experiments for Understanding Catastrophic Forgetting

Machine Learning 2022-12-14 v3

Abstract

In this paper we explore whether the fundamental tool of experimental psychology, the behavioral experiment, has the power to generate insight not only into humans and animals, but artificial systems too. We apply the techniques of experimental psychology to investigating catastrophic forgetting in neural networks. We present a series of controlled experiments with two-layer ReLU networks, and exploratory results revealing a new understanding of the behavior of catastrophic forgetting. Alongside our empirical findings, we demonstrate an alternative, behavior-first approach to investigating neural network phenomena.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.10570,
  title  = {Behavioral Experiments for Understanding Catastrophic Forgetting},
  author = {Samuel J. Bell and Neil D. Lawrence},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.10570},
  year   = {2022}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T07:02:47.227Z