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The associative nature of human associative learning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

David R. Shanks
David R. Shanks
Affiliation:
Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, London WC1H 0AP, United Kingdom. d.shanks@ucl.ac.ukwww.ucl.ac.uk/psychlangsci
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Abstract

The extent to which human learning should be thought of in terms of elementary, automatic versus controlled, cognitive processes is unresolved after nearly a century of often fierce debate. Mitchell et al. provide a persuasive review of evidence against automatic, unconscious links. Indeed, unconscious processes seem to play a negligible role in any form of learning, not just in Pavlovian conditioning. But a modern connectionist framework, in which “cognitive” phenomena are emergent properties, is likely to offer a fuller account of human learning than the propositional framework Mitchell et al. propose.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 225 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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