Vector Symbolic Architectures (VSA's) are a variety of related methods for encoding complex semantic structures in fixed-width distributed representations. As of 2018 this list of publications is (a bit!) dated as I have not been active in the area, but remain very interested due to the many exciting advances in related areas like deep-learning, and word-, sentence- and thought-vectors.

Compiled by Tony Plate. Please email mailto://tplate@acm.org with corrections and additions.

Links to people working with VSA's

Bibliography of VSA- and HRR-related publications

Eliasmith, C. and P. Thagard (2001). Integrating structure and meaning: A distributed model of analogical mapping. Cognitive Science. (html version)

Fishbein, J (2008) Integrating Structure and Meaning: Using Holographic Reduced Representations to Improve Automatic Text Classification Thesis for Master of Applied Science in Systems Design Engineering Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. https://www.uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/bitstream/10012/3819/1/thesis.pdf

Fishbein, J and C. Eliasmith (2008) Methods for augmenting semantic models with structural information for text classification. Advances in Information Retrieval. Springer. pp. 575-579. DOI 10.1007/978-3-540-78646-7_58 (online version)

Fishbein, J and C. Eliasmith (2008) Integrating structure and meaning: A new method for encoding structure for text classification. Advances in Information Retrieval. Springer. pp. 514-521.(online version)

Gayler, R.W. (2006). Vector Symbolic Architectures are a viable alternative for Jackendoff’s challenges. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29(1), 78-79 doi:10.1017/S0140525X06309028. Commentary on: van der Velde, F. & de Kamps, M. (2006) "Neural blackboard architectures of combinatorial structures in cognition", Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29(1), 37-70. [prepublication PDF] http://r.gayler.googlepages.com/RGBBScommentVK2006-prepublication.pdf

Gayler, R.W. (2004) (Talk) Vector Symbolic Architectures Answer Jackendoff’s Challenges Seminar given at Redwood Neuroscience Institute, Menlo Park, 15 October 2004. http://r.gayler.googlepages.com/JackendoffChallenges-RNIV2.pdf

Gayler, R.W. (2003). Vector Symbolic Architectures answer Jackendoff’s challenges for cognitive neuroscience.  In Peter Slezak (Ed.), ICCS/ASCS International Conference on Cognitive Science (pp. 133-138). Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales. http://cogprints.org/3983/ http://r.gayler.googlepages.com/gayler2003JackendoffchallengesV3.pdf

Gayler, R.W. (2003) (Talk) Compositional memory for recognition of complex objects: A proposal Seminar given at Redwood Neuroscience Institute, Menlo Park, 22 October, 2003. http://r.gayler.googlepages.com/CompositionalMemoryslidesV5.pdf

Gayler, R.W. (2000) (Talk) Multiplicative binding, representation operators and analogical inference Presentation given at 5th Australasian Cognitive Science Conference, Melbourne, 1 February, 2000. http://r.gayler.googlepages.com/CogScitalkV1.pdf

Gayler, R.W. (1999). Holographic networks are hiking the foothills of analogy. In Arun Jagota, Tony Plate, Lokendra Shastri, & Ron Sun (Eds.), Connectionist symbol processing: Dead or alive? Neural Computing Surveys, 2, 1-40. http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/NCS/vol2.html http://r.gayler.googlepages.com/gayler1999NCSvol2_1Connectionistsymbolprocessing.pdf

Gayler, R.W. (1998). Multiplicative binding, representation operators, and analogy. In Keith Holyoak, Dedre Gentner, & Boicho Kokinov (Eds.), Advances in analogy research: Integration of theory and data from the cognitive, computational, and neural sciences (p. 405). Sofia, Bulgaria: New Bulgarian University. http://cogprints.org/502/ http://r.gayler.googlepages.com/gayler1998Multiplicativebinding.pdf

Gayler, R.W., & Wales, R. (1998). Connections, binding, unification, and analogical promiscuity. In Keith Holyoak, Dedre Gentner, & Boicho Kokinov (Eds.), Advances in analogy research: Integration of theory and data from the cognitive, computational, and neural sciences (pp. 181-190). Sofia, Bulgaria: New Bulgarian University. http://cogprints.org/500/ http://r.gayler.googlepages.com/gaylerwales1998Analogicalpromiscuitypaper.pdf

Jones, Michael N, Mewhort, Douglas J. (2007) Representing Word Meaning and Order Information in a Composite Holographic Lexicon. Psychological Review, Vol. 114, No. 1. (January 2007), pp. 1-37. http://www.indiana.edu/~clcl/BEAGLE/Jones_Mewhort_PR.pdf

Kanerva, P. (in press). Hyperdimensional Computing: An Introduction to computing in distributed representation with high-dimensional random vectors. Cognitive Computation. http://www.springerlink.com/content/966151841g415165/fulltext.pdf

Kanerva, P. (1988) Sparse Distributed Memory (with Foreword by Douglas R. Hofstadter). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Kanerva, P. (1993) "Sparse Distributed Memory and related models." In M.H. Hassoun (ed.), Associative Neural Memories: Theory and Implementation; 50-76. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. (Text: http://www.rni.org/kanerva/sdmchapter-text.pdf, Figures: http://www.rni.org/kanerva/sdmchapter-figs.pdf )

Kanerva, P., Sjoedin, G., Kristoferson, J., Karlsson, R., Levin, B., Holst, A., Karlgren, J., and Sahlgren, M. (2001) "Computing with large random patterns." In Uesaka, Y., Kanerva, P., and Asoh, H. (eds.) Foundations of Real-World Intelligence. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications, http://www.rni.org/kanerva/rwi-sics.pdf

Kanerva, P., Kristoferson, J., and Holst, A. (2000) "Random indexing of text samples for Latent Semantic Analysis." In L.R. Gleitman and A.K. Josh (eds.), Proc. 22nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (Philadelphia), p. 1036. Mahwah, New Jersey: Erlbaum,. http://www.rni.org/kanerva/cogsci2k-poster.txt

Kanerva, P. (1994) "The Spatter Code for encoding concepts at many levels." In M. Marinaro and P.G. Morasso (eds.), ICANN '94, Proceedings of International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (Sorrento, Italy), vol. 1, pp. 226-229. London: Springer-Verlag,. http://www.rni.org/kanerva/icann94.pdf

Kanerva, P. (1997) "Fully distributed representation." Proc. 1997 Real World Computing Symposium (RWC'97, Tokyo). Report TR-96001, pp. 358-365. Real World Computing Partnership, Tsukuba-city, Japan, http://www.rni.org/kanerva/rwc97.ps.gz

Levy, S.D. and R. Gayler (2008). Vector Symbolic Architectures: A New Building Material for Artificial General Intelligence. Proceedings of the First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-08). IOS Press. http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy/pubs/agi_2008_levy_gayler.pdf Video of presentation: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6666777138089848257

Levy, S.D. (2009) (to appear) Becoming Recursive: Toward a Computational Neuroscience Account of Recursion in Language and Thought. In H. van der Hulst, ed., Recursion and Human Language, Mouton de Gruyter (2009). (Link to appear at http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy/pubs/)

Levy, S.D. (2007) Changing Semantic Role Representations with Holographic Memory. In Computational Approaches to Representation Change during Learning and Development: Papers from the 2007 AAAI Symposium. Technical Report FS-07-04, AAAI Press. http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy/pubs/fs2007_levy.pdf

Levy, S.D. (2007) Analogical Integration of Semantic Roles with Vector Symbolic Architectures Proceedings of the Workshop on Analogies: Integrating Multiple Cognitive Abilities (AnICA07), Nashville, TN. Publication Series of the Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrueck. http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy/pubs/anica2007_levy.pdf

Levy, S.D. and Kirby, S. (2006). Evolving Distributed Representations for Language with Self-Organizing Maps. Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on the Emergence and Evolution of Linguistic Communication, Rome, Italy (Lecture Notes in Computer Science). Springer Verlag. http://www.cs.wlu.edu/~levy/pubs/eelc2006_levy_kirby.pdf

Neumann, J. (2002). Learning the Systematic Transformation of Holographic Reduced Representations. Cognitive Systems Research, 3(2), 227-235, 2002. http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~jneumann/Publications/neumann_cogsys_preprint.pdf

Neumann, J. (2001) Holistic Processing of Hierarchical Structures in Connectionist Networks. PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, August 2001. http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/~jneumann/holistic_trafo/thesis.pdf

Plate, Tony (2003) "Holographic Reduced Representations",CSLI Lecture Notes Number 150, CSLI Publications, Stanford,CA, ISBN 1575864304 http://www.amazon.com/Holographic-Reduced-Representation-Distributed-Information/dp/1575864304

Plate, Tony A. (2002) "Convolution-based memory models", Macmillian Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, ed Lynn Nadel. Draft version (PDF, 9 pages, 73k)

Plate, Tony A. (2002) "Distributed Representations", Macmillian Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, ed Lynn Nadel. Draft version (PDF, 15 pages, 111k)

Plate, Tony A. (2000) "Randomly connected sigma-pi neurons can form associative memories". Network: Computation in neural systems. Vol. 11, No. 4, pp321-332. PDF (270k).

Plate, Tony A. (2000) "Analogy retrieval and processing with distributed vector representations". Expert Systems: The International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Neural Networks, Special Issue on Connectionist Symbol Processing, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp29-40. PDF (70k).

Plate, Tony A. (1998). "Structured operations with distributed vector representations" In Keith Holyoak, Dedre Gentner, and Boicho Kokinov, Advances in Analogy Research: Integration of Theory and Data from the Cognitive, Computational, and Neural Sciences. NBU Series in Cognitive Science. New Bugarian University, Sofia. gzipped postscript (167K). This was a presentation at the Analogy'98 workshop, in Sofia, Bulgaria, Jul 16-20, 1998.

Plate, Tony A.(1998) "Chunks, bindings, STAR and Holographic Reduced Representations." Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Commentary on "Processing Capacity Defined by Relational Complexity: Implications for Comparative, Developmental, and Cognitive Psychology", by Halford, Wilson and Phillips. gzipped postscript (70k)

Plate, Tony A. (1997), "A common framework for distributed representation schemes for compositional structure", in Connectionist Systems for Knowledge Representation and Deduction, Frederic Maire and Ross Hayward and Joachim Diederich, editors, pp15-34, Queensland University of Technology, gzipped postscript (102K)

Plate, Tony A. (1997), "Structure Matching and Transformation with Distributed Representations", in Connectionist-Symbolic Integration, R. Sun and F. Alexandre (eds), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. gzipped postscript (75K)

Plate, Tony A. (1995), "Holographic Reduced Representations", IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, vol. 6, no. 3, pp623-641, 1995, 21 pages: gzipped postscript (149K).

Plate, Tony A. (1994), "Distributed Representations and Nested Compositional Structure", PhD Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto, 1994, 216 pages: gzipped postscript (565K) gzipped 2up-postscript (570K).

Plate, Tony A., (1993) "Holographic recurrent networks", In C. L. Giles, S.J. Hanson, and J. D. Cowan, editors, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 5 (NIPS*92), pp34-41, Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, 1993, 8 pages: gzipped postscript (42K).

Plate, Tony A. (1991), "Holographic Reduced Representations: Convolution algebra for compositional distributed representations", In John Mylopoulos and Ray Reiter, editors, Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), pp30-35, Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, 1991, 6 pages. gzipped postscript (54K) PDF (216K).

Rachkovskij, Dmitri A., and Kussul, Ernst M. (2001) Binding and Normalization of Binary Sparse Distributed Representations by Context-Dependent Thinning. Neural Computation, February 2001, Vol. 13, No. 2, Pages 411-452.

Rutledge-Taylor , Matthew F., Vellino, Andre, and West, Robert L (2008) A Holographic Associative Memory Recommender System, http://chat.carleton.ca/~mrtaylo2/HolographicRecommender2008.pdf

Sahlgren, M., Holst, A., and Kanerva, P. (2008). Permutations as a means to encode order in word space. Proc. 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. pp. 1300-1305. http://www.sics.se/~mange/papers/permutationsCogSci08.pdf

Stewart, Terrence C. and Eliasmith, Chris (2008) Building Production Systems with Realistic Spiking Neurons Cognitive Science Conference. Washington, DC. August, 2008. with Terrence C. Stewart (1st) submitted poster. http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/csjarchive/proceedings/2008/pdfs/p1759.pdf

Stewart, T., Eliasmith, C. (2009). Compositionality and biologically plausible models. In W. Hinzen, E. Machery, and M. Werning (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Compositionality.