Biological constraints on instrumental and classical conditioning: Retrospect and prospect

Abstract

The adequacy of traditional approaches to the study of animal learning to account fully for learning phenomena has been seriously questioned during the past decade. Critics of traditional analyses advocated a biological orientation to the interpretation of associative processes and introduced a variety of concepts intended to provide a new framework for the study of animal learning. This promise of a reorientation of the field has not been realized. The concepts of biological constraints, adaptive specializations, and situation specificity of learning have had a less profound influence on the general process approach to instrumental and classical conditioning than anticipated. The present paper makes explicit the conceptual bases of the original biological approaches to learning, identifies reasons why they failed to change fundamentally the study of instrumental and classical conditioning, and proposes an alternative approach to the use of ecological and evolutionary principles in studies of conditioning. We suggest a renewed comparative approach to the study of learning phenomena that avoids many of the difficulties inherent in earlier formulations by providing (1) a strategy for the discovery of adaptive specializations in learning, (2) an ecological framework for the discussion of these adaptive specializations, and (3) a renewed emphasis on the study of species differences in learning.