harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) (04/19/88)
The following is the abstract of a target article to appear in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS). All BBS articles are accompanied by "open peer commentary" from across disciplines and around the world. For information about serving as a commentator on this article, send email to harnad@mind.princeton.edu or write to BBS, 20 Nassau Street, #240, Princeton NJ 08540 [tel: 609-921-7771]. Specialists in the following areas are encouraged to contribute: connectionism/PDP, neural modeling, associative modeling, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, cognitive psychology, behavioral biology, neuroethology. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING: THE NEW HEGEMONY Jaylan Sheila Turkkan Division of Behavioral Biology Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Converging data from different disciplines are showing that the role of classical [associative] conditioning processes in the elaboration of human and animal behavior is larger than previously supposed. Older restrictive 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 under the exclusive province of either operant conditioning or cognitive psychology. There have also been changes in the way conditioning is conducted and evaluated. Data from a number of seemingly unrelated phenomena such as postaddictive drug relapse, the placebo effect and immune system conditioning turn out to be related to classical conditioning. Classical conditioning has also been found in simpler and simpler organisms and has recently been demonstrated in brain slices in utero. This target article will integrate the diverse areas of classical conditioning research and theory; it will also challenge teleological interpretations of classically conditioned responses and will offer some basic principles to guide experimental testing in diverse areas. -- Stevan Harnad harnad@mind.princeton.edu (609)-921-7771