On the Generality of the Laws of Learning.

That all events are equally associable and obey common laws is a central assumption of general process learning theory. A continuum of preparedness is denned which holds that organisms are prepared to associate certain events, unprepared for some, and contraprepared for others. A review of data from the traditional learning paradigms shows that the assumption of equivalent associability is false: in classical conditioning, rats are prepared to associate tastes with illness even over very long delays of reinforcement, but are contraprepared to associate tastes with footshock. In instrumental training, pigeons acquire key pecking in the absence of a contingency between pecking and grain (prepared), while cats, on the other hand, have trouble learning to lick themselves to escape, and dogs do not yawn for food (contraprepared). In discriminatio n, dogs are contraprepared to learn that different locations of discriminativ e stimuli control go-no go responding, and to learn that different qualities control directional responding. In avoidance, responses from the natural defensive repertoire are prepared for avoiding shock, while those from the appetitive repertoire are contraprepared. Language acquisition and the functional autonomy of motives are also viewed using the preparedness continuum. Finally, it is speculated that the laws of learning themselves may vary with the preparedness of the organism for the association and that different physiological and cognitive mechanisms may covary with the dimension. Sometimes we forget why psychologists ever trained white rats to press bars for little pellets of flour or sounded metronomes followed by meat powder for domestic dogs. After all, when in the real world do rats encounter levers which they learn to press in order to eat, and when do our pet dogs ever come across metronomes whose clicking signals meat powder ? It may be useful now to remind ourselves about a basic premise which gave rise to such bizarre endeavors, and to see if we still have reason to believe this premise.