Mechanisms in Classical Conditioning
A Computational Approach

A neural network view of the processes involved in classical conditioning using computational simulations to analyse actual experimental data.

Nestor Schmajuk (Author)

9780521887809, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 January 2010

504 pages, 142 b/w illus. 9 tables
25.4 x 17.9 x 2.7 cm, 1.13 kg

"... a tour de force or at least as a richly referenced tour of the largely pre-21st-century theoretical and empirical literature of classical conditioning. One comes away with a profoundly renewed appreciation for how far the endeavor has come since its launch more than a century ago in St. Petersburg. Even if computational models are only a side interest, the comprehensive sweep of their application throughout the book offers a rigorous introduction to conditioning procedures and phenomena."
Harold Miller Jr. for PsycCRITIQUES

What mechanisms are involved in enabling us to generate predictions of what will happen in the near future? Although we use associative mechanisms as the basis to predict future events, such as using cues from our surrounding environment, timing, attentional, and configural mechanisms are also needed to improve this function. Timing mechanisms allow us to determine when those events will take place. Attentional mechanisms ensure that we keep track of cues that are present when unexpected events occur and disregard cues present when everything happens according to our expectations. Configural mechanisms make it possible to combine separate cues into one signal that predicts an event different from that predicted individually by separate cues. Written for graduates and researchers in neuroscience, computer science, biomedical engineering and psychology, the author presents neural network models that incorporate these mechanisms and shows, through computer simulations, how they explain the multiple properties of associative learning.

Part I. Introduction: 1. Classical conditioning: data and theories
Part II. Attentional and Associative Mechanisms: 2. An attentional-associative model of conditioning
3. Simple and compound conditioning
4. The neurobiology of classical conditioning
5. Latent inhibition
6. The neurobiology of latent inhibition
7. Creativity
8. Blocking and overshadowing
9. Extinction
10. The neurobiology of extinction
Part III. Configural Mechanisms: 11. A configural model of conditioning
12. Occasion setting
13. The neurobiology of occasion setting
Part IV. Attentional, Associative, Configural, and Timing Mechanisms: 14. Configuration and timing: timing and occasion setting
15. Attention and configuration: extinction cues
16. Attention, association and configuration: causal learning and inferential reasoning
Part V. Conclusion: Mechanisms of classical conditioning.

Subject Areas: Neurosciences [PSAN], Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Physiological & neuro-psychology, biopsychology [JMM]