Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T14:13:59.108Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How do we get from propositions to behavior?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Daniel A. Sternberg  and
James L. McClelland
Daniel A. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305sternberg@stanford.edu
James L. McClelland
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and the Center for Mind, Brain, and Computation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. jlm@psych.stanford.eduhttp://psych.stanford.edu/~jlm
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mitchell et al. describe many fascinating studies, and in the process, propose what they consider to be a unified framework for human learning in which effortful, controlled learning results in propositional knowledge. However, it is unclear how any of their findings privilege a propositional account, and we remain concerned that embedding all knowledge in propositional representations obscures the tight interdependence between learning from experiences and the use of the results of learning as a basis for action.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 226 - 227
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cleeremans, A. & McClelland, J. L. (1991) Learning the structure of event sequences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 120(3):235–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Houwer, J., & Beckers, T. (2003) Secondary task difficulty modulates forward blocking in human contingency learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 56B:345–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruschke, J. K. & Blair, N. (2000) Blocking and backward blocking involve learned inattention. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 7(4):636–45.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kruschke, J. K., Kappenman, E. & Hetrick, W. (2005) Eye gaze and individual differences consistent with learned attention in associative blocking and highlighting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 31(5):830–45.Google ScholarPubMed
McClelland, J., McNaughton, B. & O'Reilly, R. (1995) Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: Insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. Psychological Review 102(3):419–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McClelland, J. & Thompson, R. (2007) Using domain-general principles to explain children's causal reasoning abilities. Developmental Science 10(3):333–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sternberg, D. A. & McClelland, J. L. (in preparation) Situation matters: Task-specific constraints modulate cue competition effects in contingency learning.Google Scholar
Vandorpe, S., De, Houwer, J. & Beckers, T. (2007b) The role of memory for compounds in cue competition. Learning and Motivation 38:195–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar