Achieving compositional connectionism means finding a way to represent
role-filler bindings in a connectionist system without sacrificing
role-filler independence. Rolefiller binding schemes based on
varieties of conjunctive coding (the most common approach in the
connectionist literature) fail to preserve role-filler
independence. At the same time, dynamic binding of roles to fillers
(e.g., by synchrony of firing) represents bindings without sacrificing
independence, but is inadequate for storing bindings in longterm
memory. An appropriate combination of dynamic binding (for
representation in working memory) and conjunctive coding (for
long-term storage and token formation) provides a platform for
compositional connectionism, and has proven successful in simulating
numerous aspects of human perception and cognition.