Synopses & Reviews
Although many professionals in psychology (including the sub-disciplines of human learning and memory, clinical practice related to psychopathology, neuroscience, educational psychology and many other areas) no longer receive training in learning and conditioning, the influence of this field remains strong. Therefore, many researchers and clinicians have little knowledge about basic learning theory and its current applications beyond their own specific research topic. The primary purpose of the present volume is to highlight ways in which basic learning principles, methodology, and phenomena underpin, and indeed guide, contemporary translational research. With contributions from a distinguished collection of internationally renowned scholars, this 23-chapter volume contains specific research issues but is also broad in scope, covering a variety of topics in which associative learning and conditioning theory apply, such as drug abuse and addiction, anxiety, fear and pain research, advertising, attribution processes, acquisition of likes and dislikes, social learning, psychoneuroimmunology, and psychopathology (e.g., autism, depression, helplessness and schizophrenia). This breadth is captured in the titles of the three major sections of the book: Applications to Clinical Pathology; Applications to Health and Addiction; Applications to Cognition, Social Interaction and Motivation. The critically important phenomena and methodology of learning and conditioning continue to have a profound influence on theory and clinical concerns related to the mechanisms of memory, cognition, education, and pathology of emotional and consummatory disorders. This volume is expected to have the unique quality of serving the interests of many researchers, educators and clinicians including, for example, neuroscientists, learning and conditioning researchers, psychopharmacologists, clinical psychopathologists, and practitioners in the medical field.
Review
"The editors and contributors are experts in learning and conditioning theory and they do a nice job of discussing a large number of important topics in the book's 573 pages. However, this is not an easy read, so a foundation in behavioral theory would be extremely helpful. Clinicians and researchers who use learning theory should definitely have this book in their libraries." -- Doody's
About the Author
Todd Schachtman obtained his Ph.D. from SUNY-Binghamton examining research on conditioning and associative learning. He then served as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of York in England for 18 months and then for 18 months at the University of Rochester Medical School. He has been a faculty member at the University of Missouri since 1988. Dr. Schachtman's research is on animal learning and conditioning and the role of metabotropic glutamate receptors on learning and memory as well as additional research using human subjects.
Steve Reilly obtained his D.Phil. from the University of York, England, for research concerning the neural basis of learning and memory. He has held positions in Canada and the USA (Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine) and, since 1996, has been in the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research focuses on the neural mechanisms and functional neuroanatomy of conditioned taste aversion learning and incentive learning. Dr. Reilly is currently on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Comparative Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience.
Table of Contents
Section I: Overview
Things you always wanted to know about conditioning, but were afraid to ask
Todd R. Schachtman and Steve Reilly
Section II: Applications to Clinical Pathology
Fear extinction and emotional processing theory: A critical review
Seth J. Gillihan and Edna Foa
Fear Conditioning and Attention to Threat: An Integrative Approach to Understanding the Etiology of Anxiety Disorders
Katherine Oehlberg and Susan Mineka
Behavioral techniques to reduce relapse after exposure therapy: Applications of studies of experimental extinction
Mario A. Laborda, Bridget L. McConnell, and Ralph R. Miller
Learning and anxiety
Peter F. Lovibond
Trauma, learned helplessness, its neuroscience and implication for PTSD
Vincent M. LoLordo and J. Bruce Overmier
Abberant attentional processes in schizophrenia as reflected in latent inhibition data
Robert E. Lubow
Discrimination learning process in autism: spectrum disorders: A comparator theory
Phil Reed
Section III: Applications to Health and Addiction
Conditioned immunomodulation
Jennifer L. Szczytkowski and Donald T. Lysle
Learning, expectancy and conditioning: Human and animal applications
M. Vogel-Sprott and Mark T. Fillmore
Applications of Contemporary Learning Theory in the Treatment of Drug Abuse
Danielle E. McCarthy, Timothy B. Baker, Haruka Minami, and Vivian Yeh
Internal stimuli generated by abused substances: Role of Pavlovian conditioning and its implications for drug addiction
Rick A. Bevins and Jennifer E. Murray
Learning to eat: The influence of food cues on what, when and how much we eat
Janet Polivy, C. Peter Herman, and Laura Girz
Conditional analgesia, negative feedback and error correction
Moriel Zelikowsky and Michael S. Fanselow
Incentives in the modification and cessation of cigarette smoking
Edwin B. Fisher, Leonard Green, Amanda L. Calvert, and Russell E. Glasgow
Section IV: Applications to Cognition, Social Interaction and Motivation
Social learning and connectionism
Frank Van Overwalle
Application of associative learning paradigms to clinically relevant individual differences in cognitive processing
Teresa A. Treat, John L. Kruschke, Richard J. Viken, and Richard M. McFall
A review of procedural knowledge about the mental process models of evaluative conditioning
Jan De Houwer
Instrumental and Pavlovian Conditioning Analogues of Familiar Social Processes
Robert Ervin Cramer and Robert Frank Weiss
The impact of social cognition on emotional learning from and about others: A neurobiological perspective
Andreas Olsson
Conditioning and marketing
Todd R. Schachtman, Jennifer Walker and Stephanie Wade
Applications of Pavlovian conditioning to sexual behavior and reproduction
Michael Domjan and Chana K. Akins
Hot and bothered: Classical conditioning of sexual incentives in humans
Heather Hoffman