WHAT IS WRONG WITH PROTOTYPES

Representing objects and concepts as points in low-dimensional shape s pace defined by distances to other complete object exemplars or protot ypes, expressed as single numbers, misses the key advantages of repres entation in terms of hierarchically constructed, meaningful features o f the environment. Generalisation along statistically significant, nea r-independent, sparse, cooperative features that stand directly for va rious aspects of a concept is essential.