The invention discloses a device and method for executing artificial neural network self-learning operation. The device comprises an instruction storage unit, a controller unit, a data access unit, an interconnection module, a primary operation module and a plurality of secondary operation modules. According to the device and method, the self-learning pre-training of a multilayer neural network can adopt a layer-by-layer training manner; for each layer of network, the self-learning pre-training is completed after multiple operations are iterated until the weight is updated to be smaller than a certain threshold value. Each iteration process can be divided into four stages, calculation is carried out in the first three stages to respectively generate a first-order hidden layer median, a first-order visible layer median and a second-order hidden layer median, and the weight is updated in the last stage by utilizing the medians in the first three stages.