Conditioning as a principle of learning.

Abstract

A theory of learning, to be effective, must account for the facts which have been established. The significance of the facts themselves is, unfortunately, not at present clear. Most experimental investigations have necessarily measured learning in terms of certain end results, however these were accomplished, leaving undetermined whether the subject has learned to do one thing in one way or one thing in many different ways. And most experimental investigations have concerned such intricate special activities that their results cannot be generalized. Theories of learning can attempt to systematize only the facts of the more elementary forms of learning.Most of the facts of learning are derived from common knowledge. The elementary facts of learning were fairly well understood by the associationists. The role of experiment in this field is as a rule illustrative. Pavlov's 'conditioned reflex' is accepted because it fits into a body of common knowledge about human and animal nature. That burned children dread fires is accepted before hearing of Pavlov. If Pavlov's results had contradicted this body of common knowledge they would have been met with sceptical analysis. Even though they seem to corroborate common knowledge they deserve thorough examination.

An attention-based associative account of adjacent and nonadjacent dependency learning.

“…The earlier accounts of conditioning (e.g., Guthrie, 1930) focused exclusively on the contiguity of the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli (CS and US, respectively). However, further studies made it obvious that the repeated exposure to a pair of contiguous events is not sufficient to trigger associative learning.…”

The copyist model of response emission

“…This notion may remind the reader of a contiguity account from Guthrie (1930Guthrie ( , 1933. As he stated often, "stimuli which are acting at the time of a response tend, on their recurrence, to evoke that response" (Guthrie, 1933, p. 355).…”

“…To our reading, Guthrie (1930Guthrie ( , 1933 brooks no exceptions to the idea that changes in behavior that accompany changes in independent variables are due to reproduction of prior movements that occurred in the presence of the stimuli cuing reinforcement. He can do this because he is silent about just how and whether those cuing stimuli should operate.…”

Effects of Implicit Failure Priming on Cognitive and Motor Performance in Elementary School Children

“…The principle of one-trial learning (Guthrie, 1930;Seligman, 1971) has been widely used in anxiety research to explain the development of phobias. According to this principle, even a single association between a cue and an intense threat can suffice to establish a stable association between the two.…”