The past half-century has seen a dramatic shift in the biobehavioral study of learning and motivation. Fifty years ago, theory was dominated by mechanistic ideas about drive, reinforcement, and temporal contiguity. Now ethological and cognitive themes have become part of the lexicon. Robert C. Bolles, PhD, whose classic book Theory of Motivation marked the downfall of Hullian drive theory, was at the forefront of this emerging school of thought, advocating a new blend of psychology and ethology. This volume reflects his influential scholarship and shares the same themes that guided his thinking: behavior and function. In Learning, Motivation, and Cognition, Bolles's former students, contemporaries, and colleagues continue his legacy in writing about these themes.
List of Contributors
Foreword
—John Garcia
About This Book: The Life and Influence of Robert C. Bolles
—Michael S. Fanselow and Mark E. Bouton
I. Evolution, Phylogeny, and Ontogeny
- Evolved Behavioral Mechanisms
—Lewis Petrinovich - Behavioral Systems and the Demise of Equipotentiality: Historical Antecedents and Evidence From Sexual Conditioning
—Michael Domjan - Developmental Dissociation of the Components of Conditioned Fear
—Pamela S. Hunt and Byron A. Campbell - How Typical and Atypical Contexts Influence Infant Behavior
—Alexis C. Collier
II. The Motivation of Behavior
- Regulation of Food Intake: Interactions Between Learning and Physiology
—Randy J. Seeley, Douglas S. Ramsay, and Stephen C. Woods - Motivation as a Function of Animal Versus Experimenter Control
—George Collier and Deanne Johnson - Feeding Dynamics: Why Rats Eat in Meals and What This Means for Foraging and Feeding Regulation
—John E. R. Staddon and B. Silvano Zanutto - Wheels, Clocks, and Anorexia in the Rat
—Robert A. Boakes - The Behaviors of Sleep and Sleepiness: An Overview
—Robert D. Ogilvie
III. Learned Food Preferences and Aversions
- Sexual Dimorphisms in Conditioned Taste Aversions: Mechanism and Function
—Kathleen C. Chambers, David Yuan, Elizabeth A. Brownson, and Yuan Wang - Drug Discrimination Learning: Assessment of Opioid Receptor Pharmacology
—Anthony L. Riley - The Nature and Strength of Caloric Conditioning
—Paul M. Fedrochak - The Consummatory Rat: The Psychological Hedonism of Robert C. Bolles
—Ronald Mehiel
IV. Defensive Behavior
- Stimulus, Environmental, and Pharmacological Control of Defensive Behaviors
—D. Caroline Blanchard - Performance Rules for Problem-Specific Defense Reactions
—Ronald A. Sigmundi - Species-Specific Defense Reactions: Retrospect and Prospect
—Michael S. Fanselow
V. Cognition in Animal Learning
- Bolles's Psychological Syllogism
—Anthony Dickinson - The Neurobiology of Memory for Aversive Emotional Events
—Larry Cahill, Benno Roozendaal, and James L. McGaugh - Signals for Whether Versus When an Event Will Occur
—Mark E. Bouton
Appendix: The Publications of Robert C. Bolles
Author Index
Subject Index
About the Editors
Historians of psychology will be fascinated by the wealth of anecdotes and personal recollections about Bolles, but the book is especially about how his influence steered the research careers of students and not a few of his colleagues…[T]his book should appeal to a wide audience, especially graduate students and professionals interested in biological approaches to learning, cognition, motivation, or emotion.
—Contemporary Psychology, 1998, Vol 43, No 100
Bolles was an evolutionary psychologist before it was popular…His revolution was a gentle one, guided by careful research and creative theorizing. This collection of writings by his colleagues and students captures the flavor of that quiet but forceful style…This unique reflection of his life and ideas points up his loss to those who knew his research and to all who know him personally.
—CHOICE, April 1998, Vol 35, No 8
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