Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: reward-schedule effects and dispositional learning
- 2 Motivational and associative mechanisms of behavior
- 3 Frustration theory: an overview of its experimental basis
- 4 Survival, durability, and transfer of persistence
- 5 Discrimination learning and prediscrimination effects
- 6 Alternatives and additions to frustration theory
- 7 Ontogeny of dispositional learning and the reward-schedule effects
- 8 Toward a developmental psychobiology of dispositional learning and memory
- 9 Summing up: steps in the psychobiological study of related behavioral effects
- 10 Applications to humans: a recapitulation and an addendum
- Appendix: some phenomena predicted or explained by frustration theory
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
8 - Toward a developmental psychobiology of dispositional learning and memory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: reward-schedule effects and dispositional learning
- 2 Motivational and associative mechanisms of behavior
- 3 Frustration theory: an overview of its experimental basis
- 4 Survival, durability, and transfer of persistence
- 5 Discrimination learning and prediscrimination effects
- 6 Alternatives and additions to frustration theory
- 7 Ontogeny of dispositional learning and the reward-schedule effects
- 8 Toward a developmental psychobiology of dispositional learning and memory
- 9 Summing up: steps in the psychobiological study of related behavioral effects
- 10 Applications to humans: a recapitulation and an addendum
- Appendix: some phenomena predicted or explained by frustration theory
- References
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
For some years, theorists have believed that the explanation of the PREE and some of the other reward-schedule effects involves common underlying mechanisms, though the nature of the specific mechanisms that have been offered has differed from one theory to another. Our ontogenetic investigations begin to suggest that whereas these earlier explanations may or may not be reasonable for adult rats (and other mammalian species), they may not be entirely satisfactory for the infant to weanling rat. This is particularly clear if we compare the ages of appearance of a number of the reward-schedule effects, presented in the last chapter as Table 7.1.
Do theories based on adult behavior explain the order of appearance of the reward-schedule effects in infants?
According to frustration theory, the PREE, first seen in the 12- to 14-day range, involves a more complex chain of associations than the MREE or SNC, which are seen at successively later ages: The latter two effects involve the emergence of primary frustration as a result of extinction or reduced reward, the subsequent conditioning of anticipatory frustration, and the action of this conditioned frustration to strongly (paradoxically) suppress instrumental responding. In contrast, the PREE involves not only the first three stages – the conditioning of reward expectancy, primary frustration, and the conditioning of frustration – but also a fourth, the counterconditioning of feedback stimulation from anticipatory frustration to instrumental responding.
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- Information
- Frustration TheoryAn Analysis of Dispositional Learning and Memory, pp. 174 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992