Classical conditioning: The new hegemony

Abstract

Converging data from different disciplines are showing the role of classical conditioning processes in the elaboration of human and animal behavior to be larger than previously supposed. Restricted views of classically conditioned responses as merely secretory, reflexive, or emotional are giving way to a broader conception that includes problem-solving, and other rule-governed behavior thought to be the exclusive province of either operant conditiońing or cognitive psychology. These new views have been accompanied by changes in the way conditioning is conducted and evaluated. Data from a number of seemingly unrelated phenomena such as relapse to drug abuse by postaddicts, the placebo effect, and the immune response appear to involve classical conditioning processes. Classical conditioning, moreover, has been found to occur in simpler and simpler organisms and recently even demonstrated in brain slices and in utero. This target article will integrate the several research areas that have used the classical conditioning process as an explanatory model; it will challenge teleological interpretations of the classically conditioned CR and offer some basic principles for testing conditioning in diverse areas.

A Cue-Theory of Consumption

“…6 Likewise, cue-triggered hypersensitivity raises one's valuation for an anaesthetic drug like morphine. 7 The subjective "craving" of the decision-maker described in the story [1980], Stewart and Eikelboom [1987], Siegel, Krank, and Hinson [1988], Turkkan [1989], and the commentaries that accompany the Turkkan paper.…”

“…Other domains include language, memory, social competition, aggression, play, substance abuse, pharmacology, immunology, exercise physiology, stress, digestive physiology, skeletal response systems, cardiovascular functioning, sexual behavior, maternal lactation, and infant suckling. See Siegel, Krank, and Hinson [1988], Turkkan [1989], Hollis [1997], andDomjan, Cusato, andVillareal [2000].…”

Sound on the rebound: Bringing form and function back to the forefront in understanding nonhuman primate vocal signaling

“…If one group member produces a threat call before or during aggressive acts like biting and chasing, that sound subsequently will, by association, elicit arousal and affect in previous victims. The principles invoked here are those of Pavlovian conditioning, a form of learning that occurs in every kind of animal life, 53 even humans. Such conditioning is central to affective responding to social signals.…”

Equivalence Relations: A Critical Analysis

“…From now on, I will speak of "functional equivalence" to mean functional equivalence in this nontrivial sense, unless the context indicates otherwise. The most well-known example of functional equivalence in this sense (implying a transfer of function) is Pavlovian conditioning, in which the eliciting function of an unconditional stimulus (US) transfers to a conditional stimulus (CS) through CS-US pairings or correlation (see Turkkan, 1989Turkkan, , 1993.…”

“…In contrast to the naming hypothesis and relational frame theory (e.g., S. C. Hayes, Gifford, & Wilson, 1996), this alternative framework may be called Pavlovian in a broad sense (Turkkan, 1989). It assumes that the roots of symbolic behavior lie in the transfer of functions from one stimulus to another through Pavlovian correlations sensitive to operant feedback (see below for more explanation).…”