Learning and Behavior A Contemporary Synthesis Mark E. Bouton University of Vermont Sinauer Associates, Inc. Publishers Sunderland, Massachusetts, 01375
Table of Contents Preface x 1Learning Theory: What It Is and How It Got This Way 3 Philosophical Roots 5 Are people machines? 5 Associations and the contents of the mind 7 Biological Roots 9 Reflexes, evolution, and early comparative psychology 9 The rise of the conditioning experiment 12 A Science of Learning and Behavior 14 John B. Watson 14 B. F. Skinner 16 Edward C. Tolman 19 Computer and brain metaphors 22 Human learning and animal learning 25 Tools for Analyzing Learning and Behavior 27 Learning about stimuli and about behavior 27 Crows foraging at the beach 29 Kids at play 30 People using drugs 32 Relations between S, R, and S* 32 2 Learning and Adaptation 39 Evolution and Behavior 40 Natural selection 40 Adaptation in behavior 40 Fixed action patterns 42 Innate behavior 43 Adaptation in Instrumental Conditioning 46 The law of effect 46 Reinforcement 48 Shaping 48 Adaptation in Classical Conditioning 50 Signals for food 50 Territoriality and reproduction 51 Fear 54 Conditioning with drugs as S*s 55 Sign tracking 58 Other Parallels between Signal and Response Learning 60 Extinction 60 Timing of S* 62 Size of S* 63 Preparedness 66
Contents vii 3The Nuts and Bolts of Conditioning 73 The Basic Conditioning Experiment 74 Pavlov s experiment 74 What is learned in conditioning? 75 Variations on the basic experiment 77 Methods for Studying Classical Conditioning 78 Eyeblink conditioning in rabbits 78 Fear conditioning in rats 79 Autoshaping in pigeons 81 Taste aversion learning in rats 82 Things that Affect the Strength of Conditioning 83 Time 83 Novelty of the CS and the US 86 Intensity of the CS and the US 86 Pseudoconditioning and sensitization 87 Conditioned Inhibition 89 How to detect conditioned inhibition 90 How to produce conditioned inhibition 91 Two methods that do NOT produce true inhibition 92 Information Value in Conditioning 93 CS-US contingencies in classical conditioning 93 Blocking and unblocking 95 Relative validity in conditioning 98 4 Theories of Conditioning 103 The Rescorla-Wagner Model 104 Blocking and unblocking 107 Extinction and inhibition 108 Other new predictions 111 CS-US contingencies 114 Summary: What does it all mean? 116 Some Problems with the Rescorla-Wagner Model 117 The extinction of inhibition 117 Latent inhibition 117 Another look at blocking 117 The Role of Attention in Conditioning 119 The Mackintosh model 119 The Pearce-Hall model 121 Summary: What does it all mean? 123 Short-Term Memory and Learning 123 Priming of the US 125 Priming of the CS 126 Habituation 128 Summary: What does it all mean? 130 Nodes, Connections, and Conditioning 130 Wagner s SOP model 131 Sensory versus emotional US nodes 135 Elemental versus configural CS nodes 137 Summary: What does it all mean? 140 5 Whatever Happened to Behavior Anyway? 145 Memory and Learning 146 How well is conditioning remembered? 146 Causes of forgetting 149 Remembering, forgetting, and extinction 152 Other examples of context, ambiguity, and interference 157 Summary 159 The Modulation of Behavior 160 Occasion setting 160 Three properties of occasion setters 163 What does it all mean? 166 What is learned in occasion setting? 166 Configural conditioning 168 Other forms of modulation 169 Summary 169 Understanding the Nature of the Conditioned Response 169 Two problems for stimulus substitution 170
viii Contents Understanding conditioned compensatory responses 172 Conditioning and behavior systems 175 What does it all mean? 179 Conclusion 181 6 Are the Laws of Conditioning General? 185 Everything You Know Is Wrong 185 Special Characteristics of Flavor Aversion Learning 188 One-trial learning 188 Long-delay learning 189 Learned safety 191 Hedonic shift 193 Compound potentiation 196 Summary 199 Some Reasons Why Learning Laws May be General 200 Evolution produces both generality and specificity 200 The generality of relative validity 202 Associative Learning in Honeybees and Humans 205 Conditioning in bees 205 Category and causal learning in humans 207 Some disconnections between conditioning and human category and causal learning 212 Causes, effects, and causal power 216 Conclusion 218 7 Behavior and Its Consequences 223 Basic Tools and Issues 224 Reinforcement versus contiguity theory 224 Flexibility, purpose, and motivation 227 Operant psychology 231 Conditioned reinforcement 233 The Relationship between Behavior and Payoff 235 Different ways to schedule payoff 235 Choice 239 Choice is everywhere 242 Impulsiveness and self-control 245 Behavioral economics: Are reinforcers all alike? 248 Theories of Reinforcement 251 Drive reduction 251 The Premack principle 252 Problems with the Premack principle 255 Behavioral regulation theory 257 Selection by consequences 259 8 How Stimuli Guide Instrumental Action 267 Categorization and Discrimination 269 Trees, water, and Margaret 270 Other categories 272 How do they do it? 275 Basic Processes of Generalization and Discrimination 278 The generalization gradient 278 Interactions between gradients 281 Perceptual learning 285 Mediated generalization and acquired equivalence 289 Summary 292 Another Look at the Information Processing System 292 Visual perception in pigeons 292 Attention 296 Working memory 298 Reference memory 303 The Cognition of Time 306
Contents ix Time of day cues 306 Interval timing 307 How do they do it? 311 The Cognition of Space 314 Cues that guide spatial behavior 314 Spatial learning in the radial maze and water maze 317 How do they do it? 320 9 The Motivation of Instrumental Action 329 How Motivational States Affect Behavior 330 Motivation versus learning 330 Does Drive merely energize? 332 Is motivated behavior a response to need? 337 Anticipating Reward and Punishment 342 Bait and switch 342 The Hullian response: Incentive motivation 344 Frustration 346 Another paradoxical reward effect 348 Partial reinforcement and persistence 349 Motivation by expectancies 353 What does it all mean? 358 Dynamic Effects of Motivating Stimuli 359 Opponent-process theory 360 Emotions in social attachment 362 A further look at addiction 365 Conclusion 367 10 A Synthetic Perspective on Instrumental Action 371 Avoidance Learning 372 The puzzle and solution: Two-factor theory 372 Problems with two-factor theory 375 Species-specific defense reactions 380 Cognitive factors in avoidance learning 386 Learned helplessness 389 Summary: What does it all mean? 394 Parallels in Appetitive Learning 395 The misbehavior of organisms 395 Superstition revisited 396 A general role for stimulus learning in response learning situations 399 Punishment 400 Summary: What does it all mean? 403 A Cognitive Analysis of Instrumental Action 403 Knowledge of the R-S* relation 404 Knowledge of the S-S* relation 409 S-(R-S*) learning (occasion setting) 411 S-R and habit learning 413 Glossary 421 References 434 Author Index 468 Subject Index 475