Cognitive Processes and Pavlovian Conditioning.DOCVIP

Back to Psychophysiological Home Page pavlovauto1.doc Cognitive Processes and Pavlovian Conditioning in Humans Edited by G. Davey ? 1987 John Wiley Sons Ltd Chapter 1 Human Pavlovian autonomic conditioning and the cognitive paradigm John J. Furedy University of Toronto and Diane M. Riley Addiction Research Foundation, Toronto During the last two decades, there has been a change in the pre-theoretical assumptions of experimental psychologists: the mantle of scientific respectability that used to cloak S-R theorizing has gradually come to cover cognitive theorizing instead. Segal and Lachman (1972) called this change of pre-theoretical mood a paradigm shift, and one set of arguments has centred around the question of whether this label is appropriate, or whether psychology is still a pre-paradigmatic science. However those arguments are resolved, it is the case that a change in emphasis has occurred in experimental psychology, with the focus now being on the processing of propositional information rather than on the learning of a response. The overall aim of this chapter is to offer an evaluation of the effect of this change in emphasis on human Pavlovian autonomic conditioning (HPAC). This is an experimental preparation that employs, as dependent variables, autonomically controlled, non-invasively measurable physiological functions like changes in skin resistance (the so-called GSR), peripheral vasomotor changes, and heart-rate changes. However, because human Pavlovian auto- 1 2 Cognitive processes and Pavlovian conditioning in humans nomic conditioning is a form of learning, we shall begin our analysis with a historical account of the issue that was the central concern of learning theorists of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s: the problem of what is learned. Our account of this conflict between S-R and S-S approaches of the Hull-Tolman era will then move to the current cognitive paradigm shift, and the effects of this shift on the prevailing view of Pavlovian con