There is more than one kind of learning.

Tolman, E. C.

doi:10.1037/h0055304

Cited by 323 publications

(139 citation statements)

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“…In contrast to the Pavlovian process, motivational states do not influence the instrumental process directly ; rather, the agent has to learn about the value of an outcome in a given motivational state by exposure to it while in that state . This incentive learning is similar in certain respects to the acquisition of "cathexes" envisaged by Tolman (1949aTolman ( , 1949b .The general adaptive significance of the capacity for goal-directed action is so obvious as to require little or no comment. It is this capacity that allows us and other animals to control our environment in the service of our desires and needs.…”

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confidence: 72%

“…It is this capacity that allows us and other animals to control our environment in the service of our desires and needs. And yet, if asked the most simple questions about this capacity, such as why does an animal perform an instrumental action for a food reward more readily when hungry rather than sated, a contemporary psychologist could tell us little more than Hull (1943) or Tolman (1949aTolman ( , 1949b nearly half a century ago. The fact is that the study of the psychological processes controlling the performance of simple, goal-directed, instrumental actions by basic primary motivational states has been neglected over the intervening decades.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Motivational control of goal-directed action

Dickinson

Balleine

1994

Animal Learning & Behavior

927

675

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The control of goal-directed, instrumental actions by primary motivational states, such as hunger and thirst, is mediated by two processes . The first is engaged by the Pavlovian association between contextual or discriminative stimuli and the outcome or reinforcer presented during instrumental training . Such stimuli exert a motivational influence on instrumental performance that depends upon the relevance of the associated outcome to the current motivational state of the agent . Moreover, the motivational effects of these stimuli operate in the absence of prior experience with the outcome under the relevant motivational state . The second, instrumental, process is mediated by knowledge of the contingency between the action and its outcome and controls the value assigned to this outcome . In contrast to the Pavlovian process, motivational states do not influence the instrumental process directly ; rather, the agent has to learn about the value of an outcome in a given motivational state by exposure to it while in that state . This incentive learning is similar in certain respects to the acquisition of "cathexes" envisaged by Tolman (1949aTolman ( , 1949b .The general adaptive significance of the capacity for goal-directed action is so obvious as to require little or no comment. It is this capacity that allows us and other animals to control our environment in the service of our desires and needs. And yet, if asked the most simple questions about this capacity, such as why does an animal perform an instrumental action for a food reward more readily when hungry rather than sated, a contemporary psychologist could tell us little more than Hull (1943) or Tolman (1949aTolman ( , 1949b nearly half a century ago. The fact is that the study of the psychological processes controlling the performance of simple, goal-directed, instrumental actions by basic primary motivational states has been neglected over the intervening decades.It is true that we know much more about the neurophysiological and chemical mechanisms regulating consummatory behavior, such as eating, drinking, and copulating, and indeed about the major role of learning in such behaviors. A contemporary psychologist could also tell us much, at least on a functional level, about how instrumental behavior adapts to schedule and foraging constraints, and indeed about the effects of motivational variables on such adaptation . Moreover, there is an extensive literature on the psychological resources brought to bear in solving complex problems and decisions in the service of cognitive goals . But even so, we should search in vain among the literature for a consensus about the psychological processes by which primary motivational states, such as hunger and thirst, regulate simple goal-directed acts . This is the issue that we wish to address in the present paper. GOAL-DIRECTED ACTIONA prerequisite for this discussion is a clear specification of what we mean by "goal directed . " Our conception of a goal-directed action is psychological, being based upon the nature ...

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confidence: 72%

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confidence: 99%

Motivational control of goal-directed action

Dickinson

Balleine

1994

Animal Learning & Behavior

927

675

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“…It followed along lines established by Tolman (1949). who emphasized that there were multiple forms of learning.…”

Section: The Hippocampus As a Spatial Memory Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

The hippocampus and space revisited

1991

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The hippocampal formation has long been the focus of intense interest among neuroscientists. The discovery by Scoville and Milner (1957) that the mesial temporal lobe, including the hippocampal formation, played a central role in memory function in humans can be said to have started the modern era of research on this brain system. There followed two decades of animal research aimed at creating experimental models of the memory defects observed in humans, including my dissertation research, which met with scant success (Nadel, 1968). Indeed, when John O'Keefe and I started considering the hippocampus and its possible role in spatial mapping several years later, one of our greatest challenges was to analyze the extant lesion literature in terms of this theory with the minimum amount of special pleading. There were already several hundred such studies, varying extensively in terms of exact size and regional location of the lesion, the means by which the lesion had been created, the kind of animal used, the nature of the task, the kind of motivation employed, and so on. Yet, it was our feeling in 1976, when we terminated the review of the lesion literature, which was ultimately published in The Hippocumpiis CIS a Cognitive Map (O'Keefe and Nadel, 1978), that the spatial hypothesis successfully handled the vast preponderance of these lesion studies as well as what was then known about the physiology of the hippocampal formation.In the years following publication of the book, most published lesion studies were concerned in some way with the spatial map hypothesis; most often, comparisons with rival hypotheses were involved. This was a frustrating period because, although many thought they were testing our ideas, too frequently the major themes we hoped to stress were misconstrued. In this article I dig back into the book we published in 1978 and reiterate some of the themes that were important to us then, and remain so now. By so doing, 1 hope to bring out some of the reasons why we thought, and continue to think, that space is so special as to warrant a structure as compelling as the hippocampal formation.I will concentrate on three major issues. First, I will discuss at some length the fact that our theory was about a ~p a t i a l memory system, not simply a "spatial" system. Second, Iwill discuss our assumption that the spatial memory system we allocated to the hippocampus was but one of many spatial systems, and that the role of these various systems can best be understood if one takes into consideration an animal's behavior in its natural habitat. Third, I will briefly discuss our view that in the human hippocampus, at least in the left hemisphere, the mapping system represents something more abstract than physical space.Before turning to these substantive points, however, a brief digression into methods and first principles is in order. Some years before the book was published, O'Keefe and I published a paper (Nadel and O'Keefe, 1974) in which we presented some of the reasons for hypothesizing that the hippocamp...

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“…Place learning was held to require extramaze stimuli; response learning required interoceptively generated stimuli. For Restle, all learning is the same, a position directly opposed to Tolman's (1949) claim that there are different kinds of learning. The parallel between Estes' and Restle's contributions seems clear now.…”

Section: The Nature Of Contextmentioning

confidence: 96%