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Main Authors: Tsai, Ping-Rui, Wang, Chi-hsiang, Liao, Yu-Cheng, Huang, Hong-Yue, Hong, Tzay-Ming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18620
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author Tsai, Ping-Rui
Wang, Chi-hsiang
Liao, Yu-Cheng
Huang, Hong-Yue
Hong, Tzay-Ming
author_facet Tsai, Ping-Rui
Wang, Chi-hsiang
Liao, Yu-Cheng
Huang, Hong-Yue
Hong, Tzay-Ming
contents As a core element of culture, images transform perception into structured representations and undergo evolution similar to natural languages. Given that visual input accounts for 60% of human sensory experience, it is natural to ask whether images follow statistical regularities similar to those in linguistic systems. Guided by symbol-grounding theory, which posits that meaningful symbols originate from perception, we treat images as vision-centric artifacts and employ pre-trained neural networks to model visual processing. By detecting kernel activations and extracting pixels, we obtain text-like units, which reveal that these image-derived representations adhere to statistical laws such as Zipf's, Heaps', and Benford's laws, analogous to linguistic data. Notably, these statistical regularities emerge spontaneously, without the need for explicit symbols or hybrid architectures. Our results indicate that connectionist networks can automatically develop structured, quasi-symbolic units through perceptual processing alone, suggesting that text- and symbol-like properties can naturally emerge from neural networks and providing a novel perspective for interpretation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_18620
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Spontaneous emergence of linguistic statistical laws in images via artificial neural networks
Tsai, Ping-Rui
Wang, Chi-hsiang
Liao, Yu-Cheng
Huang, Hong-Yue
Hong, Tzay-Ming
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Computational Physics
As a core element of culture, images transform perception into structured representations and undergo evolution similar to natural languages. Given that visual input accounts for 60% of human sensory experience, it is natural to ask whether images follow statistical regularities similar to those in linguistic systems. Guided by symbol-grounding theory, which posits that meaningful symbols originate from perception, we treat images as vision-centric artifacts and employ pre-trained neural networks to model visual processing. By detecting kernel activations and extracting pixels, we obtain text-like units, which reveal that these image-derived representations adhere to statistical laws such as Zipf's, Heaps', and Benford's laws, analogous to linguistic data. Notably, these statistical regularities emerge spontaneously, without the need for explicit symbols or hybrid architectures. Our results indicate that connectionist networks can automatically develop structured, quasi-symbolic units through perceptual processing alone, suggesting that text- and symbol-like properties can naturally emerge from neural networks and providing a novel perspective for interpretation.
title Spontaneous emergence of linguistic statistical laws in images via artificial neural networks
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.18620