because observed behavior is the result of interactions between environmental factors and genes during the extended period of development. Therefore, to better understand expert and exceptional performance, we must require that the account specify the different environmental factors that could selectively promote and facilitate the achievement of such performance. In addition, recent research on expert performance and expertise (Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988; Ericsson & Smith, 1991a) has shown that important characteristics of experts' superior performance are acquired through experience and that the effect of practice on performance is larger than earlier believed possible. For this reason, an account of exceptional performance must specify the environmental circumstances, such as the duration and structure of activities, and necessary minimal biological attributes that lead to the acquisition of such characteristics and a corresponding level of performance. An account that explains how a majority of individuals can attain a given level of expert performance might seem inherently unable to explain the exceptional performance of only a small number of individuals. However, if such an empirical account could be empirically supported, then the extreme characteristics of experts could be viewed as having been acquired through learning and adaptation, and studies of expert performance could provide unique insights into the possibilities and limits of change in cognitive capacities and bodily functions. In this article we propose a theoretical framework that explains expert performance in terms of acquired characteristics resulting from extended deliberate practice and that limits the role of innate (inherited) characteristics to general levels of activity and emotionality. We provide empirical support from two new studies and from already published evidence on expert performance in many different domains.

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The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.

https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/research&labs/berridge/publications/Berridge&RobinsonBrResRev1998.pdf

What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience?

Cognitive-experiential self-theory integrates the cognitive and the psychodynamic unconscious by assuming the existence of two parallel, interacting modes of information processing: a rational system and an emotionally driven experiential system. Support for the theory is provided by the convergence of a wide variety of theoretical positions on two similar processing modes; by real-life phenomena—such as conflicts between the heart and the head; the appeal of concrete, imagistic, and narrative representations; superstitious thinking; and the ubiquity of religion throughout recorded history—and by laboratory research, including the prediction of new phenomena in heuristic reasoning.

Integration of the cognitive and the psychodynamic unconscious.

Introduction
Debate continues over the precise causal contribution made by mesolimbic dopamine systems to reward. There are three competing explanatory categories: ‘liking’, learning, and ‘wanting’. Does dopamine mostly mediate the hedonic impact of reward (‘liking’)? Does it instead mediate learned predictions of future reward, prediction error teaching signals and stamp in associative links (learning)? Or does dopamine motivate the pursuit of rewards by attributing incentive salience to reward-related stimuli (‘wanting’)? Each hypothesis is evaluated here, and it is suggested that the incentive salience or ‘wanting’ hypothesis of dopamine function may be consistent with more evidence than either learning or ‘liking’. In brief, recent evidence indicates that dopamine is neither necessary nor sufficient to mediate changes in hedonic ‘liking’ for sensory pleasures. Other recent evidence indicates that dopamine is not needed for new learning, and not sufficient to directly mediate learning by causing teaching or prediction signals. By contrast, growing evidence indicates that dopamine does contribute causally to incentive salience. Dopamine appears necessary for normal ‘wanting’, and dopamine activation can be sufficient to enhance cue-triggered incentive salience. Drugs of abuse that promote dopamine signals short circuit and sensitize dynamic mesolimbic mechanisms that evolved to attribute incentive salience to rewards. Such drugs interact with incentive salience integrations of Pavlovian associative information with physiological state signals. That interaction sets the stage to cause compulsive ‘wanting’ in addiction, but also provides opportunities for experiments to disentangle ‘wanting’, ‘liking’, and learning hypotheses. Results from studies that exploited those opportunities are described here.

/pdf/the-debate-over-dopamine-s-role-in-reward-the-case-for-2f5liljkhc.pdf

The debate over dopamine’s role in reward: the case for incentive salience

We provide an “executive-attention” framework for organizing the cognitive neuroscience research on the constructs of working-memory capacity (WMC), general fluid intelligence, and prefrontal cortex (PFC) function. Rather than provide a novel theory of PFC function, we synthesize a wealth of singlecell, brain-imaging, and neuropsychological research through the lens of our theory of normal individual differences in WMC and attention control (Engle, Kane, & Tuholski, 1999; Engle, Tuholski, Laughlin, & Conway, 1999). Our critical review confirms the prevalent view that dorsolateral PFC circuitry is critical to executive-attention functions. Moreover, although the dorsolateral PFC is but one critical structure in a network of anterior and posterior “attention control” areas, it does have a unique executiveattention role in actively maintaining access to stimulus representations and goals in interference-rich contexts. Our review suggests the utility of an executive-attention framework for guiding future research on both PFC function and cognitive control.

/pdf/the-role-of-prefrontal-cortex-in-working-memory-capacity-jwrotkwivk.pdf

The role of prefrontal cortex in working-memory capacity, executive attention, and general fluid intelligence: An individual-differences perspective

The development of the objective method in investigating the physiological activities of the cerebral hemispheres. – Concept of Reflex. -- Variety of Reflexes. -- Signal reflexes, the most fundamental physiological characteristic of the hemispheres. doi : 10.5214/ans.0972.7531.1017309

Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex

The Work of the Digestive Glands. Lectures by Professor J. P. Pawlow. Translated by W. H. Thompson, M.D. Pp. xii. 196. London : Charles Griffin & Company. 1902. This book contains a quantity of new and original work on the digestive functions ; the conclusions have been arrived at by very ingenious and elaborate methods of experiment. One of the most interesting and novel points brought out by these observations is the very striking range of variability and adaptation to the varying needs of digestion displayed by the gastric and pancreatic secretions. Thus, although the acidity of the former appears to be constant when secreted, the total acidity of the gastric contents can vary by means of alterations in the quantity of gastric juice poured out. Further, if one kind of

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

Papers

Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex

The work of the digestive glands

Conditioned reflexes and psychiatry

Conditioned Reflexes. An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex

Pavlov, a biography