Learning and Behavior: A Contemporary Synthesis

by Bouton, Mark E.

• ISBN13: 9780878933853
• ISBN10: 0878933859
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2016-03-22
• Publisher: Sinauer Associates is an imprint of Oxford University Press

Summary

Research on fundamental learning processes continues to tell an important and interesting story. In the second edition of Learning and Behavior: A Contemporary Synthesis, Mark Bouton recounts that story, providing an in-depth but highly readable review of modern learning and behavior theory that is informed by the history of the field. The text reflects the author's conviction that the study of animal learning has a central place in psychology, and that understanding its principles and theories is important for students, psychologists, and scientists in related disciplines (e.g., behavioral neuroscience and clinical psychology).

Almost all of the chapters are organized to illustrate how knowledge is accumulated through the systematic development of theory and research. The book opens with a brief history that connects the modern issues with their philosophical and biological roots. Chapter 2 addresses the idea that basic learning processes are designed to help an organism adapt to a changing world; in the process, it introduces the reader to a wide range of interesting examples of learning. After analyzing some fundamental phenomena in Pavlovian learning, the book then provides a very clear and readable review of modern conditioning theories since the Rescorla-Wagner model, discusses memory retrieval and behavior-system processes that govern performance, and addresses the question of whether the laws of learning and behavior uncovered in the laboratory maze and Skinner box have generality-by studying learning in honey bees and categorization and causal judgments and proposition learning in humans. Instrumental learning is then discussed from various perspectives in chapters on behavior and its consequences (research in behavior analysis and behavioral economics), how stimuli guide instrumental action (a survey of the field of animal cognition), and how motivation influences instrumental action. The final chapter reviews and integrates the major themes of the book, describing avoidance learning, learned helplessness, and related examples of learning before reviewing the modern cognitive and synthetic perspective on instrumental action.

Lively and current, Learning and Behavior: A Contemporary Synthesis, Second Edition, engages students while illustrating the interconnectedness of topics within the field and the excitement of modern research.

For Students

Companion Website

The Learning and Behavior, Second Edition, Companion Website includes resources to help students learn and review the content of each chapter and test their understanding of the concepts presented in the textbook. The site includes the following resources:

- Chapter Outlines
- Chapter Summaries
- Flashcards
- Glossary
- Online quizzes

For Instructors

Instructor's Resource Library (available to qualified adopters)

The Learning and Behavior, Second Edition, Instructor's Resource Library includes the following resources:

* Textbook Figures & Tables: All of the textbook's figures (including photos) and tables are provided in both JPEG (high- and low-resolution) and PowerPoint formats. All images have been formatted and optimized for excellent legibility when projected.

* Instructor's Manual: The Instructor's Manual includes the following sections for each chapter of the textbook:
- Chapter Outline
- Learning Objectives
- Class Discussion and Critical Thinking Exercises
- Suggested Additional Resources
- Key Terms

* Lecture Presentations: New for the Second Edition, these ready-to-use PowerPoint presentations cover all the key material in each chapter, and include selected figures and tables.

* Test Bank: A comprehensive set of exam questions is provided for each chapter of the textbook, in both multiple-choice and short-answer formats (Companion Website online quiz questions also included). New for the Second Edition, each question is referenced to Bloom's Taxonomy and to textbook sections. The Test Bank is provided in several formats:
- Word files, by chapter
- Diploma test creation program (software included). Diploma makes it easy to create quizzes and exams using any combination of publisher-provided questions and your own questions. Diploma also exports to a wide range of formats for import into learning management systems such as Blackboard, Moodle, and Desire2Learn.
- Blackboard files, for easy import into your Blackboard course

Online Quizzing

The online quizzes that are part of the Learning and Behavior, Second Edition, Companion Website include an instructor administration interface that allows the quizzes to be used as assignments. Instructors also have the ability to create their own quizzes and add their own questions.

Author Biography

Mark E. Bouton is the Robert B. Lawson Green & Gold Professor of Psychology at the University of Vermont. He is a leading researcher in the field of animal learning, cognition, and behavior. He received his B.A. from Williams College and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. For many years, his research has investigated the relationships between context, conditioning, memory, and motivation, with a special emphasis on inhibitory processes like extinction. Some of his scientific writing has focused on the connections between modern learning theory, neuroscience, and issues in cognitive behavioral therapy (e.g., panic disorder, fear and anxiety, relapse after therapy). He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a James McKeen Cattell Scholar, a University Scholar at the University of Vermont, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford), and he is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He was Editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, the field's most prestigious journal, from 1998 until 2003. He has taught an up-to-date course in Learning, which is given away in his book, for over three decades.

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1. Learning Theory?What It Is and How It Got This Way
Philosophical Roots
Are people machines?
Associations and the contents of the mind
Biological Roots
Reflexes, evolution, and early comparative psychology
The rise of the conditioning experiment
A Science of Learning and Behavior
John B. Watson
B. F. Skinner
Edward C. Tolman
Computer and brain metaphors
Human learning and animal learning
Tools for Analyzing Learning and Behavior
Learning about stimuli and about behavior
Crows foraging at the beach
Human eating and overeating
Kids at play
People using drugs
Relations between S, R, and O
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key People and Key Terms

Chapter 2. Learning and Adaptation
Evolution and Behavior
Natural selection
Adaptation in behavior
Fixed action patterns
Innate behavior
Habituation
Adaptation and Learning: Instrumental Conditioning
The law of effect
Reinforcement
Shaping
Adaptation and Learning: Classical Conditioning
Signals for food
Territoriality and reproduction
Fear
Conditioning with drugs as the outcome
Sign tracking
Other Parallels Between Signal and Response Learning
Extinction
Timing of the outcome
Size of the outcome
Preparedness
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key Terms

Chapter 3. The Nuts and Bolts of Classical Conditioning
The Basic Conditioning Experiment
Pavlov's experiment
What is learned in conditioning?
Variations on the basic experiment
Methods for Studying Classical Conditioning
Eyeblink conditioning in rabbits
Fear conditioning in rats
Autoshaping in pigeons
Appetitive conditioning in rats
Taste aversion learning
Things That Affect the Strength of Conditioning
Time
Novelty of the CS and the US
Intensity of the CS and the US
Pseudoconditioning and sensitization
Conditioned Inhibition
How to produce conditioned inhibition
How to detect conditioned inhibition
Two methods that do NOT produce true inhibition
Information Value in Conditioning
CS-US contingencies in classical conditioning
Blocking and unblocking
Overshadowing
Relative validity in conditioning
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key Terms

Chapter 4. Theories of Conditioning
The Rescorla-Wagner Model
Blocking and unblocking
Extinction and inhibition
Other new predictions
CS-US contingencies
What does it all mean?
Some Problems with the Rescorla-Wagner Model
The extinction of inhibition
Latent inhibition
Another look at blocking
The Role of Attention in Conditioning
The Mackintosh model
The Pearce-Hall model
A combined approach
What does it all mean?
Short-Term Memory and Learning
Priming of the US
Priming of the CS
Habituation
What does it all mean?
Nodes, Connections, and Conditioning
Wagner's "SOP" model
Sensory versus emotional US nodes
Elemental versus configural CS nodes
What does it all mean?
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key Terms

Chapter 5. Whatever Happened to Behavior Anyway?
Memory and Learning
How well is conditioning remembered?
Causes of forgetting
Remembering, forgetting, and extinction
Other examples of context, ambiguity, and interference
Can memories be erased?
Interim Summary
The Modulation of Behavior
Occasion setting
Three properties of occasion setters
What does it all mean?
What is learned in occasion setting?
Configural conditioning
Other forms of modulation
What does it all mean?
Understanding the Nature of the Conditioned Response
Two problems for stimulus substitution
Understanding conditioned compensatory responses
Conditioning and behavior systems
What does it all mean?
Conclusion
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key Terms

Chapter 6. Are the Laws of Conditioning General?
Everything You Know Is Wrong
Special Characteristics of Flavor Aversion Learning
One-trial learning
Long-delay learning
Learned safety
Hedonic shift
Compound potentiation
Conclusion
Some Reasons Learning Laws May Be General
Evolution produces both generality and specificity
The generality of relative validity
Associative Learning in Honeybees and Humans
Conditioning in bees
Category and causal learning in humans
Some disconnections between conditioning and human category and causal learning
Causes, effects, and causal power
Conclusion
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key Terms

Chapter 7. Behavior and Its Consequences
Basic Tools and Issues
Reinforcement versus contiguity theory
Flexibility, purpose, and motivation
Operant psychology
Conditioned reinforcement
The Relationship Between Behavior and Payoff
Different ways to schedule payoff
Choice
Choice is everywhere
Impulsiveness and self-control
Nudging better choices
Behavioral economics: Are reinforcers all alike?
Theories of Reinforcement
Drive reduction
The Premack principle
Problems with the Premack principle
Behavioral regulation theory
Selection by consequences
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key Terms

Chapter 8. How Stimuli Guide Instrumental Action
Categorization and Discrimination
Trees, water, and Margaret
Other categories
How do they do it?
Basic Processes of Generalization and Discrimination
The generalization gradient
Interactions between gradients
Perceptual learning
Mediated generalization and acquired equivalence
Conclusion
Another Look at the Information Processing System
Visual perception in pigeons
Attention
Working memory
Reference memory
The Cognition of Time
Time of day cues
Interval timing
How do they do it?
The Cognition of Space
Cues that guide spatial behavior
Spatial learning in the radial maze and water maze
How do they do it?
Metacognition
How do they do it?
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key Terms

Chapter 9. The Motivation of Instrumental Action
How Motivational States Affect Behavior
Motivation versus learning
Does Drive merely energize?
Is motivated behavior a response to need?
Anticipating Reward and Punishment
Bait and switch
The Hullian response: Incentive motivation
Frustration
Another paradoxical reward effect
Partial reinforcement and persistence
Motivation by expectancies
General and specific outcome expectancies
What does it all mean?
Dynamic Effects of Motivating Stimuli
Opponent-process theory
Emotions in social attachment
A further look at addiction
Conclusion
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key Terms

Chapter 10. A Synthetic Perspective on Instrumental Action
Avoidance Learning
The puzzle and solution: Two-factor theory
Problems with two-factor theory
Species-specific defense reactions
Cognitive factors in avoidance learning
Learned helplessness
Summary: What does it all mean?
Parallels in Appetitive Learning
The misbehavior of organisms
Superstition revisited
A general role for stimulus learning in response learning situations
Punishment
Summary: What does it all mean?
A Cognitive Analysis of Instrumental Action
Knowledge of the R-O relation
Knowledge of the S-O relation
S-(R-O) learning (occasion setting)
S-R and "habit" learning
Summary
Discussion Questions
Key Terms

Glossary
References
Author Index
Subject Index