Behavioral studies of Pavlovian conditioning.

The purpose of this review is to bring to the attention of neuroscientists some of the current thinking of psychologists who study learning processes from a behavioral perspective. The past 20 years have seen enormous changes in the ways that psychologists conceptualize and study elementary learning processes; however, many of those changes are poorly appreciated by the neuroscience community at large. The review is organized into two parts. First, I described a framework in which to think about the conduct of learning experiments (Rescoria & Holland, 1976). Although that framework will seem simple minded to some, it provides an overall structure within which to place the study of learning, a structure that helps one avoid certain distressingly common conceptual pitfalls. Second, I describe some properties of a carefully stud­ ied example of learning that has dominated modern theorizing: Pavlovian conditioning. That description emphasizes not only basic data but also certain key notions in modern theories of pavlovian associative learning. Of course, it is impossible to provide an exhaustive review of either the theory or data in this area. Instead, my goal is to give a flavor of current thinking.