DISCERN is a large, modular neural network system for reading, paraphrasing and answering questions about stereotypical (script-based) stories. A precis of this book and a short summary paper should give you a quick overview of this research. To get an idea what the DISCERN programs are like (without having to first port them), take a look at the on-line demo. It runs remotely on cascais.cs.utexas.edu, with graphics display on your X11 screen. The DISCERN software consists of four components: 1. PROC for training and testing the backpropagation-based processing modules (for parsing, generation, and question answering), 2. HFM for training and testing the hierarchical feature maps that form the basis for the episodic memory, 3. DISLEX for training and testing the lexicon (lexical and semantic feature maps and associative connections between them), and 4. DISCERN, which is the integrated complete story processing model put together from the final results of the above three programs. Comments to discern@cs.utexas.edu.

TAR