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2014, International Journal of Comparative Psychology
https://doi.org/10.46867/IJCP.2014.27.04.04…
26 pages
2 files
Behavior is a sequence of actions. Premackian conditioning occurs when one of those actions permits an animal to engage in more biologically potent positive responses—reinforcement—or forces them to engage in less positive (or negative) responses —punishment. Signals of the transition from one class of actions to another focus the instrumental responses in the first class and inform the contingent responses in the second class. The signals may be innate (USs) or learned (sign-learning); excitatory (leading to more positive actions) or inhibitory (leading to less positive actions). The potency of an action has phylogenetic origins, but may be conditioned by proximity to more potent responses, such as consummation of a reinforcer. With practice instrumental responses may take on increased strength, and in some cases become motivationally autonomous—become habits. Stimuli or responses that signal the availability of more positive actions may become incentive motivators that animals wil...
American Psychologist, 1992
The facts of Skinner's research in the 1930s on the acquisition of operant behavior are combined with his own later comments. Skinner discovered that a single reinforcement is enough for conditioning of an arbitrary response. The combination of successive extinction curves after single reinforcements within one session led to the first schedule of intermittent reinforcement. Operant conditioning also could be arranged to generate new forms of behavior by shaping by successive approximation. Skinner was first influenced by the then dominant terminology of reflexology, but he soon rejected this stimulusresponse tradition by demonstrating that eliciting stimuli play no role in operant conditioning. Theoretical implications of Skinner's early research are compared and contrasted with other theories of conditioning at the time. Some great scientists have donated to posterity either their brains or some genetic material presumably under the assumption that similar brains and genes may perhaps produce great scientists in the future. Subscribing to a different philosophy of life, Skinner donated to posterity detailed descriptions of his environment from his childhood, through his active career, and to his retirement (
This chapter excerpt provides a brief description of classical conditioning. Three video mini-lectures are included.
2018
A defining feature of Pavlovian conditioning is that the unconditioned stimulus (US) is delivered whether or not the animal performs a conditioned response (CR). This has lead to the question: Does CR performance play any role in conditioning? Between the 1930's and 1970's, a consensus emerged that CR acquisition is driven by CS-US experiences, and that CRs play a minimal role, if any. Here we revisit the question and present two new quantitative methods to evaluate whether CRs influence the course of learning. Our results suggest that CRs play an important role in Pavlovian acquisition, in such paradigms as rabbit eyeblink conditioning, pigeon autoshaped key pecking, and rat autoshaped lever pressing and magazine entry.
Animal Learning & Behavior, 1980
In a Pavlovian procedure, groups of pigeons were presented with a compound auditoryvisual stimulus that terminated with either response-independent electric shock or food. In a subsequent test, the tone CS was dominant in aversive conditioning, reliably eliciting conditioned head raising and prancing. The red light CS was dominant in appetitive conditioning, reliably eliciting pecking. This result was replicated in a second experiment, in which trials were widely spaced. Four additional groups of pigeons received pairings of the separate element CSs with the USs. Red light, but not tone, was an effective CS in appetitive conditioning, whereas tone, but not red light, was effective in aversive conditioning. There was no discriminative responding in zero-contingency control groups. Several theoretical accounts of these data are discussed.
Animal Learning & Behavior, 1983
The adequacy of traditional approaches to the study of animal learning to account fully for learning phenomena has been seriously questioned during the past decade. Critics of traditional analyses advocated a biological orientation to the interpretation of associative processes and introduced a variety of concepts intended to provide a new framework for the study of animal learning. This promise of a reorientation of the field has not been realized. The concepts of biological constraints, adaptive specializations, and situation specificity of learning have had a less profound influence on the general process approach to instrumental and classical conditioning than anticipated. The present paper makes explicit the conceptual bases of the original biological approaches to learning, identifies reasons why they failed to change fundamentally the study of instrumental and classical conditioning, and proposes an alternative approach to the use of ecological and evolutionary principles in studies of conditioning. We suggest a renewed comparative approach to the study of learning phenomena that avoids many of the difficulties inherent in earlier formulations by providing (1) a strategy for the discovery of adaptive specializations in learning, (2) an ecological framework for the discussion of these adaptive specializations, and (3) a renewed emphasis on the study of species differences in learning.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1984
Learning & Behavior, 2008
Kenneth Spence (1936, 1937) formalized a quantitative, elemental approach to association theory that has had a broad and dominating influence on learning theory for many years. A set of challenges to the basic approach has spurred the subsequent evolution of elemental theory in various ways. Four of the challenges and some resulting theoretical accommodations are described in the context of Pavlovian conditioning. The evolution involves departures from important specifics of Spence’s theory, but is viewed as demonstrating the utility of the basic, elemental approach that is one of his legacies.
Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 1983
The adequacy of traditional approaches to the study of animal learning to account fully for learning phenomena has been seriously questioned during the past decade. Critics of traditional analyses advocated a biological orientation to the interpretation of associative processes and introduced a variety of concepts intended to provide a new framework for the study of animal learning. This promise of a reorientation of the field has not been realized. The concepts of biological constraints, adaptive specializations, and situation specificity of learning have had a less profound influence on the general process approach to instrumental and classical conditioning than anticipated. The present paper makes explicit the conceptual bases of the original biological approaches to learning, identifies reasons why they failed to change fundamentally the study of instrumental and classical conditioning, and proposes an alternative approach to the use of ecological and evolutionary principles in studies of conditioning. We suggest a renewed comparative approach to the study of learning phenomena that avoids many of the difficulties inherent in earlier formulations by providing (1) a strategy for the discovery of adaptive specializations in learning, (2) an ecological framework for the discussion of these adaptive specializations, and (3) a renewed emphasis on the study of species differences in learning.
International journal of comparative …, 2004
Contemporary learning research has provided multiple paradigms that have benefited not only researchers in the field, but also applied theorists and practitioners. However, the emphasis on theory development has made the learning literature almost impenetrable to nonexperts. In the present paper, we attempt to summarize not the different theoretical perspectives that have been proposed to explain different instances of learning, but the empirical relationships that testing of such theories has uncovered. Because the empirical relationships we summarize here hold across preparations and species, we suggest that such relationships should be understood as the empirical laws of basic learning. The focus of our review is the Pavlovian conditioning tradition, but most of these relationships also apply to instrumental learning and causality learning. We hope that the relatively novel organization we present here helps researchers and practitioners to directly incorporate these empirical principles into their current theoretical framework, whatever it may be.
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