Stimulus Relationships and Feature Selection in Learning and Behavior
Eliot S. Hearst · 2018
This chapter discusses three major themes. One theme involves the relative importance of stimulus-reinforcer and response-reinforcer relations. Another theme pertains to the value of making a learning-performance distinction, and the final theme concerns conceptualization of stimulus events as potential sources of information. The chapter is concerned with the value of making an explicit distinction between learning and performance. Autoshaping and the feature-positive effect were used by Hearst and Jenkins to illustrate the more general phenomenon of sign tracking. The chapter addresses two phenomena, autoshaping and the feature-positive effect, served as vehicles for analyzing some issues similar to those which have traditionally separated cognitive and response-centered approaches to learning. Data from omission and response-prevention experiments show that the subject&s;s learning of a relationship between stimuli is more important in accounting for the two phenomena than is learning of associations between specific overt responses and stimuli.