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Journal ArticleDOI

On the generality of the laws of learning

01 Sep 1970-Psychological Review (American Psychological Association)-Vol. 77, Iss: 5, pp 406-418
TL;DR: A review of data from the traditional learning paradigms shows that the assumption of equivalent associability is false: in classical conditioning, rats are prepared to associate tastes with illness even over very long delays of reinforcement, but are contraprepared to associated tastes with footshock.
Abstract: That all events are equally associable and obey common laws is a central assumption of general process learning theory. A continuum of preparedness is denned which holds that organisms are prepared to associate certain events, unprepared for some, and contraprepared for others. A review of data from the traditional learning paradigms shows that the assumption of equivalent associability is false: in classical conditioning, rats are prepared to associate tastes with illness even over very long delays of reinforcement, but are contraprepared to associate tastes with footshock. In instrumental training, pigeons acquire key pecking in the absence of a contingency between pecking and grain (prepared), while cats, on the other hand, have trouble learning to lick themselves to escape, and dogs do not yawn for food (contraprepared). In discriminatio n, dogs are contraprepared to learn that different locations of discriminativ e stimuli control go-no go responding, and to learn that different qualities control directional responding. In avoidance, responses from the natural defensive repertoire are prepared for avoiding shock, while those from the appetitive repertoire are contraprepared. Language acquisition and the functional autonomy of motives are also viewed using the preparedness continuum. Finally, it is speculated that the laws of learning themselves may vary with the preparedness of the organism for the association and that different physiological and cognitive mechanisms may covary with the dimension. Sometimes we forget why psychologists ever trained white rats to press bars for little pellets of flour or sounded metronomes followed by meat powder for domestic dogs. After all, when in the real world do rats encounter levers which they learn to press in order to eat, and when do our pet dogs ever come across metronomes whose clicking signals meat powder ? It may be useful now to remind ourselves about a basic premise which gave rise to such bizarre endeavors, and to see if we still have reason to believe this premise.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Combined results from four experiments lead to the following conclusions: the PQ and ITQ are internally consistent measures with high reliability; there is a weak but consistent positive relation between presence and task performance in VEs; individuals who report more simulator sickness symptoms in VE report less presence than those who report fewer symptoms.
Abstract: The effectiveness of virtual environments (VEs) has often been linked to the sense of presence reported by users of those VEs. (Presence is defined as the subjective experience of being in one place or environment, even when one is physically situated in another.) We believe that presence is a normal awareness phenomenon that requires directed attention and is based in the interaction between sensory stimulation, environmental factors that encourage involvement and enable immersion, and internal tendencies to become involved. Factors believed to underlie presence were described in the premier issue of Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. We used these factors and others as the basis for a presence questionnaire (PQ) to measure presence in VEs. In addition we developed an immersive tendencies questionnaire (ITQ) to measure differences in the tendencies of individuals to experience presence. These questionnaires are being used to evaluate relationships among reported presence and other research variables. Combined results from four experiments lead to the following conclusions: the PQ and ITQ are internally consistent measures with high reliability; there is a weak but consistent positive relation between presence and task performance in VEs; individual tendencies as measured by the ITQ predict presence as measured by the PQ; and individuals who report more simulator sickness symptoms in VE report less presence than those who report fewer symptoms.

4,940 citations


Cites background from "On the generality of the laws of le..."

  • ...Learning is aided by requiring responses that are natural for the learner in a given situation ( Seligman, 1970 )....

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  • ...Learning is aided by requiring responses that are natural for the learner in a given situation (Seligman, 1970)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors find East Asians to be holistic, attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on "dialectical" reasoning, whereas Westerners are more analytic.
Abstract: The authors find East Asians to be holistic, attending to the entire field and assigning causality to it, making relatively little use of categories and formal logic, and relying on "dialectical" reasoning, whereas Westerners are more analytic, paying attention primarily to the object and the categories to which it belongs and using rules, including formal logic, to understand its behavior. The 2 types of cognitive processes are embedded in different naive metaphysical systems and tacit epistemologies. The authors speculate that the origin of these differences is traceable to markedly different social systems. The theory and the evidence presented call into question long-held assumptions about basic cognitive processes and even about the appropriateness of the process-content distinction.

3,472 citations


Cites background from "On the generality of the laws of le..."

  • ...Theories of causality—both highly general ones having to do with temporal sequence and spatial contiguity (Seligman, 1970), as well as highly specific ones, such as the link that all omnivorous mammals are likely to make between distinctivetasting food and gastrointestinal illness experienced many hours later (Garcia, McGowan, Ervin, & Koelling, 1968)—are clearly a part of the organism's biologically given cognitive equipment....

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  • ...Theories of causality—both highly general ones having to do with temporal sequence and spatial contiguity (Seligman, 1970), as well as highly specific ones, such as the link that all omnivorous mammals are likely to make between distinctivetasting food and gastrointestinal illness experienced many…...

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors hypothesize that there is a general bias, based on both innate predispositions and experience, in animals and humans to give greater weight to negative entities (e.g., events, objects, personal traits).
Abstract: We hypothesize that there is a general bias, based on both innate predispositions and experience, in animals and humans, to give greater weight to negative entities (e.g., events, objects, personal traits). This is manifested in 4 ways: (a) negative potency (negative entities are stronger than the equivalent positive entities), (b) steeper nega tive gradients (the negativity of negative events grows more rapidly with approach to them in space or time than does the positivity of positive events, (c) negativity domi nance (combinations of negative and positive entities yield evaluations that are more negative than the algebraic sum of individual subjective valences would predict), and (d) negative differentiation (negative entities are more varied, yield more complex conceptual representations, and engage a wider response repertoire). We review evi dence for this taxonomy, with emphasis on negativity dominance, including literary, historical, religious, and cultural sources, as well as the psychological literatures on learning, attention, impression formation, contagion, moral judgment, development, and memory. We then consider a variety of theoretical accounts for negativity bias. We suggest that 1 feature of negative events that make them dominant is that negative entities are more contagious than positive entities.

3,032 citations


Cites background or methods from "On the generality of the laws of le..."

  • ...These predictions amount to the claim that learning about negative USs is “prepared,” in the sense defined by Seligman (1970). A third claim is that it should be easier to reverse innate preferences than innate aversions....

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  • ...These predictions amount to the claim that learning about negative USs is "prepared," in the sense defined by Seligman (1970)....

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  • ...Seligman (1970, 1971) used conditioned taste aversions and phobias as prime examples of what he called "prepared" learning....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The fear module is assumed to mediate an emotional level of fear learning that is relatively independent and dissociable from cognitive learning of stimulus relationships.
Abstract: An evolved module for fear elicitation and fear learning with 4 characteristics is proposed. (a) The fear module is preferentially activated in aversive contexts by stimuli that are fear relevant in an evolutionary perspective. (b) Its activation to such stimuli is automatic. (c) It is relatively impenetrable to cognitive control. (d) It originates in a dedicated neural circuitry, centered on the amygdala. Evidence supporting these propositions is reviewed from conditioning studies, both in humans and in monkeys; illusory correlation studies; studies using unreportable stimuli; and studies from animal neuroscience. The fear module is assumed to mediate an emotional level of fear learning that is relatively independent and dissociable from cognitive learning of stimulus relationships.

2,777 citations


Cites background from "On the generality of the laws of le..."

  • ...These premises were incorporated into a theory of fear acquisition by Seligman (1970, 1971)....

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  • ...The existence of selective associations clearly challenges what has been termed the equipotentiality premise (Seligman, 1970) of Pavlov (1927) and Thorndike (1898)....

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  • ...…events, an evolutionary approach expects constraints on associative learning depending on the specific contexts in which the events have typically been encountered during evolution (Domjan, 1983; Garcia, McGowan, & Green, 1972; Revusky, 1977; Seligman, 1970; Seligman & Hager, 1972)....

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  • ...Seligman (1970) further proposed that prepared associations not only should be easy to acquire (often in as little as one trial) but also should obey different laws of learning than do nonprepared associations....

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  • ...Seligman (1970, 1971) assumed that evolutionary pressures have predisposed primates to condition fear more readily to stimuli related to recurrent survival threats (phylogenetically fear-relevant stimuli) than to stimuli that never have threatened survival (fear-irrelevant stimuli) or to…...

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References
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Book
15 Jan 1967
TL;DR: The coming of language occurs at about the same age in every healthy child throughout the world as mentioned in this paper, strongly supporting the concept that genetically determined processes of maturation, rather than env...
Abstract: The coming of language occurs at about the same age in every healthy child throughout the world, strongly supporting the concept that genetically determined processes of maturation, rather than env...

5,178 citations

Book
22 Dec 2014

4,258 citations

Journal ArticleDOI

4,181 citations

Book
01 Jan 1938

3,337 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The coming of language occurs at about the same age in every healthy child throughout the world, strongly supporting the concept that genetically determined processes of maturation, rather than environs-based processes, are responsible for this development.
Abstract: The coming of language occurs at about the same age in every healthy child throughout the world, strongly supporting the concept that genetically determined processes of maturation, rather than env...

2,102 citations