Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-t6hkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T15:28:49.001Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - How Animals Learn to Associate Events

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2023

Robert A. Boakes
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Get access

Summary

This chapter starts by describing key findings from the late 1960s - blocking, contingency effects, and relative cue validity - that were obtained by Leon Kamin, Bob Rescorla, and Allan Wagner from experiments on discrimination learning and fear conditioning. These led to a major shift in the way learning by animals was studied. Instead of concentrating on how their behavior changed, it took such changes as an index of what associations the animals had formed. An important example of this shift was the body of experiments on second-order conditioning and related topics carried out by Rescorla and his students. A number of theories of associative learning that were developed in the 1970s, notably the Rescorla-Wagner theory and Wagners subsequent SOP model, have remained influential for over 50 years. In the early 1980s an important distinction was drawn between actions, which are sensitive to their consequences, and automatic habits.

Type
Chapter
Information
Pavlov's Legacy
How and What Animals Learn
, pp. 258 - 302
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×