From a functional perspective, Pavlovian conditioning involves learning about conditioned stimuli (CSs) that have a pre-existing relation to an unconditioned stimulus (US) rather than learning about arbitrary or neutral CSs. In addition, the most important product of learning involves changes in how the organism responds to the US, not in how it responds to the CS, because the US is the more biologically relevant stimulus. These concepts are illustrated using examples from a variety of behavioral and physiological situations including caloric intake and digestion, breast feeding, poison-avoidance learning, eyeblink conditioning, sexual conditioning, fear conditioning, aggression, and drug tolerance and sensitization.

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Following opportunity to copulate with a female housed in an adjacent compartment, male Japanese quail spent 64% of their time near a window that provided visual access to the female (Experiment 1). This social proximity behavior persisted for at least 2 weeks of continual exposure to the window despite lack of further physical access to the female (Experiment 2) and was evident at all daylight hours (Experiment 3). Female Japanese quail stimulated more proximity behavior in male conspecifics than did other male Japanese quail or birds of other species (Experiments 4 and 5). However, many characteristics of the female quail were not critical. The female quail did not have to be previous sexual partners, familiar, sexually experienced, or reproductively competent to stimulate proximity behavior in males (Experiments 4 and 5). Experiment 6 demonstrated that the social proximity behavior was primarily a response to the visual aspects of the females. The results are discussed in relation to mate-guarding and surveillance behavior, and implications of the data for sexual classical conditioning of male Japanese quail are noted.

A localized visual stimulus presented immediately prior to access to a female conspecific stimulated approach behavior in male Japanese quail after several conditioning trials. Development of this conditioned approach behavior was observed with two different types of signal lights, 10-s and 30-s signal durations, large and small experimental chambers, and with male birds housed continually in the conditioning chambers or only placed in the chamber for brief daily sessions. Conditioning also resulted in shorter latencies to initiate copulation in males given access to a female following the signal light, in comparison with males that received access to a female unannounced by the light. Although some aspects of the conditioning experience were retained over a 6-week interval, some loss of the behavior was also observed. The conditioned behavior also decreased with repeated extinction trials, during which the signal light was presented in the absence of access to a female conspecific. The results are discussed in relation to other aspects of the social behavior of Japanese quail and other studies of sexual conditioning.

Empirical and conceptual developments that led to the formulation of a behavior system for the sexual conditioning of male Japanese quail are described. Initial efforts concentrated on conditioning with localized conditioned stimuli and on identifying behavioral indices of conditioning. Later, learning about species-typical cues and about contextual cues was also explored, and it became evident that different types of cues control different aspects of sexual behavior. The results were used to formulate a behavior system containing both response and stimulus dimensions. In this system, contextual cues and local cues are assumed to elicit only general search behavior unconditionally. In contrast, unconditioned responses to species-typical cues of a female quail include general search, focal search, and copulatory behavior. General search, focal search, and copulatory behavior can become conditioned to local cues. Conditioning can also modify focal search behavior elicited by species-typical cues and can result in various modulatory influences between different types of stimuli. The behavior system approach provides a framework for organizing the diverse sexual conditioning effects and suggests future directions for investigation.As the papers in this symposium illustrate, comprehensive understanding of how behavior develops and is shaped by experience is facilitated by considering how specific action patterns are organized into systems ofbehavior. The investigation of a behavior system may be conducted using either an analytic strategy or a synthetic strategy. In the analytic strategy, one starts with a theory or hypothesis about how the behavior system is organized and then proceeds to test empirical implications of this hypothesis. In the synthetic approach, in contrast, one first obtains information about how animals accomplish a particular biological task such as reproduction or foraging for food. This information is then used to figure out how the activity is organized.About ten years ago, my students and I embarked on an investigation of the mechanisms of sexual learning. Although numerous demonstrations of sexual learning effects were available at the time (see Domjan & Hollis, 1988, for a review), the available evidence, with fewexceptions, was demonstrational and did not provide much insight into the mechanisms of sexual learning. Given the poorly developed status of the area, we decided to pursue a research strategy that was primarily synthetic rather than analytic. In this paper I will describe the steps we took in this synthetic research strategy, as an illustra-