CHAPTER 13
Conditioning and Learning
RALPH R. MILLER AND RANDOLPH C. GRACE
357EMPIRICAL LAWS OF PAVLOVIAN RESPONDING 360
Single-Stimulus Phenomena 360
Phenomena Involving Two Stimuli: Single Cue–Single
Outcome 360
Phenomena Involving More Than Two Stimuli:
Competition, Interference, Facilitation, and
Summation 364
Mediation 366
MODELS OF PAVLOVIAN RESPONDING: THEORY 369
Units of Analysis 369
Acquisition-Focused (Associative) Models 370
Addressing Critical Factors of Acquired Behavior 371
Expression-Focused Models 374
Accounts of Retrospective Revaluation 376
Where Have the Models Taken Us? 376
INSTRUMENTAL RESPONDING 377
Law of Effect: What Is Learned? 377
The Three-Term Contingency 377
Instrumental Contingencies and Schedules of
Reinforcement 378
Comparing Pavlovian and Instrumental
Conditioning 378
Associative Analyses of Instrumental Conditioning 379
Functional Analyses of Instrumental Conditioning 380
Ecological-Economic Analyses of Instrumental
Conditioning 387
Summary 389
CONCLUSIONS 389
REFERENCES 389Earth’s many microenvironments change over time, often
creating conditions less hospitable to current life-forms than
conditions that existed prior to the change. Initially, life-
forms adjusted to these changes through the mechanisms
now collectively called evolution.Importantly, evolution im-
proves a life-form’s functionality (i.e., so-called biological
fitness as measured in terms of reproductive success) in the
environment across generations. It does nothing directly to
enhance an organism’s fit to the environment within the or-
ganism’s life span. However, animals did evolve a mecha-
nism to improve their fit to the environment within each an-
imal’s life span. Specifically, animals have evolved the
potential to change their behavior as a function of experi-
enced relationships among events, with eventshere referring
to both events under the control of the animal (i.e., re-
sponses) and events not under the direct control of the ani-
mal (i.e., stimuli). Changing one’s behavior as a function of
prior experience is what we mean by conditioningandlearn-
ing(used here synonymously). The observed behavioral
changes frequently are seemingly preparatory for an im-
pending, often biologically significant event that is contin-
gent upon immediately preceding stimuli, and sometimes
the behavioral changes serve to modify the impending event
in an adaptive way.
In principle, there are many possible sets of rules by which
an organism might modify its behavior to increase its biolog-
ical fitness (preparing for and modifying impending events)
as a result of prior exposure to specific event contingencies.
However, organisms use only a few of these sets of rules;
these constitute what we call biological intelligence.Here
we summarize, at the psychological level, the basic princi-
ples of elementary biological intelligence: conditioning and
elementary learning. At the level of the basic learning de-
scribed here, research has identified a set of rules (laws) that
appear to apply quite broadly across many species, including
humans. Moreover, within subjects these laws appear to
apply, with only adjustments of parameters being required,
across motivational systems and tasks (e.g., Domjan, 1983;Support for the preparation of this manuscript was provided by
NIMH Grant 33881. We thank Francisco Arcediano, Raymond
Chang, Martha Escobar, and Steven Stout for their comments on an
earlier version of the manuscript. Communication concerning this
chapter should be addressed to Ralph R. Miller, Department of Psy-
chology, SUNY-Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA;
[email protected].