Dedication

Preface

Introduction

The QUAD-L

Boundary Conditions




Dedication


The Quad-L Project is dedicated to my two mentors

Kenneth W. Spence & Neal E. Miller

who convinced me that the better we understand non-human Animal Learning and Motivation, the better we can understand human behavior.






Preface

Like the proverbial old soldier who "never dies but just slowly fades away", the domain of Animal Learning and Motivation (AL&M) has drifted from its earlier role as a central figure to its current background role in the mosaic science of psychology.  Once-controversial names such as Guthrie, Hull, Spence, and Tolman have become historical figures and classic issues such as awareness, contiguity, continuity, and emergentism have been placed in new contexts.  Where it was simply taken for granted that learning is the essential process distinguishing organisms from other systems in the universe, with motivation being the essential process that both guides and energizes behavior, the terms "learning" and "motivation" are rarely used today.


The waning of recognition has not been without protestations to the contrary.  In 1972, I chose the title, "The Psychology of Animal Learning and Now," to focus on some of the many important practical implications of basic research (Logan, 1972).  More recently Domjan (1987), Rescorla (1987, 1988), and Skinner (1987) have pronounced the domain of AL&M as being not just alive and well, but relevant in contemporary Psychology.  Despite the cogency of these statements, the displacement of AL&M has been inexorable.


My own belief is that a major reason for AL&M falling from favor is internal to the domain.  I think that the development of a science follows a Piagetian-like course.  A body of knowledge gives rise to a conceptual structure (theory/system) that serves to organize and, in some sense, "explain" the observations.  New knowledge is assimilated into this structure, sometimes undergoing some distortions in the process.  Totally incompatible facts are dismissed until the need for a different conceptual structure can no longer be denied.  This new structure must accomodate all available knowledge.  Thereupon, the development process is repeated.


This view is similar to, but importantly different from the notion of scientific "revolutions" (Kuhn, 1970).  At least as I understand it, a change in "paradigm" renders the pre-existing knowledge base obsolete and no longer of contemporary interest.  Of course, anyone can arbitrarily identify the variables of interest to her or him.  But so long as some psychologists retain an interest in behavior, AL&M is an invaluable source of information.  The problem is that AL&M is also an overwhelming source of information.


The reason that AL&M is responsible for its own decline is that it was caught up in the information explosion that followed World War II.  New findings were hard to disseminate, much less assimilate.  Had AL&M been able to maintain an integrated image with a conceptual core, it might have held on to its status.  But the domain itself disintegrated into pockets of research activity and miniature models with limited generality.  The grand theories of learning could not evolve fast enough.


The grand theories were based on a one-directional, completely deterministic model: the goal was to specify the independent variables of which the dependent variables were functions.  This model may be appropriate for classical conditioning because the events are presented according to a schedule without regard to the organism's behavior, but in all of the other learning paradigms, the variables are mutually interdependent.  Thus, apparent dilemmas such as the "avoidance paradox" arose because of the failure to distinguish the omission of an independent event (classical extinction) from the omission of an interdependent event (instrumental avoidance).


It would be foolish to think that one could somehow patch up this and other deficiences and thereby return AL&M to a place of revered dominance in the field.  At the empirical level, Tolman (1938) was over-zealous when he wrote that "everything of importance in psychology can be understood by studying the behavior of a rat at a choice point," and Hull (1952) was overly optimistic when he wrote that "we are even now well on the way to a general theory of social behavior."  AL&M may be alive and well but it is not likely to live up to such promises.


Nevertheless, I believe that the database generated by the unbridled enthusiasm for AL&M remains an important resource of information, and the conceptualizations remain a source of insight toward a general theory.  The challenge is to increase the accessability of this information by organizing it in some systematic fashion.  Otherwise, the fate of countless hours of thought and research effort by many dedicated scientists will be a "dusty death" on the shelves of university libraries.  The Quad-L was conceived in the hope of forming one link between the archives and contemporary thought.


Introduction


It is generally contended that science is public and cumulative.  We can certainly agree that private knowledge is not a part of science and we can probably agree that "good" scientific research is based, at least in part, on the extant publicly available knowledge.  But the more general dicta are not fully realized in the Experimental Psychology of Learning and Motivation.


Scientific knowledge of Psychology is public in the literal sense of having been published in archival books and journals that are stored in university libraries.  But in view of the burgeoning volume of the relevant literature, accessing those archives has become extremely tedious.  Were the discipline truly cumulative, this problem would not exist.  By "truly" cumulative, I mean that each new addition to the fundamental store of knowledge is integrated within the already existing framework, thus building a solid foundation for the expanding pyramid of information held together by increasingly abstract conceptual analyses.  Given such a state of affairs, mastery of the contemporary systems would automatically subsume by implication the detailed knowledge in the area and there would be little need, except as an historical exercise, to study the earlier publications from which the present systems developed.


I do not perceive Psychology as being cumulative in the above sense, nor public in the sense of being widely known by most psychologists.  Some people (e.g., Finkelman, 1978) have argued that our failure to achieve these desiderata belie out status as a science.  Alternatively, the empirical data base of the field may simply have grown too fast, with a large number of people generating such an enormous wealth of knowledge that traditional means of processing information have been inadequate.


The Quad-L (Logan's Literature and Laws of Learning) project provides a method of summarizing scientific information in a format that might facilitate the kind of insightful reorganization that will lead to a cumulation of knowledge in the ideal sense.  Of course, this is only a hope, but I do have a conviction: True integration can only be achieved by many skills under one skull, not under many skulls.  An extraordinary breadth of knowledge must be assimilated by any person who would aspire to organize our field into a true discipline.  The Quad-L at least outlines the dimensions of the task.


The QUAD-L


Literature:

The Quad-L project has three basic objectives.  One of these is to compile a reasonably complete bibliography of the Experimental Psychology of Learning and Motivation within the domain bounded by classical conditioning at the one end and spatial learning at the other.  The domain could be described as "animal learning and motivation," if one recognizes that humans are animals and restricts the coverage to learning paradigms that are applicable to all animals.  Specifically, uniquely human contexts, such as verbal paired associates learning, concept formation, and problem solving, are currently excluded from consideration.  The domain of interest is also the one that is historically identified with the grand theories of learning such as those of Guthrie, Hull, and Tolman and the atheoretical approach of Skinner.


Database:

The second objective is to associate with each of these references one or more one-line statements that provide a "root-abstract" of that publication.  Ideally, the "power" of the "root" will be quite high, so that the resulting root-abstract will capture the essential substance of an empirical finding or the critical essence of a conceptual proposition.  Root-abstracts are directed at a reasonably knowledgeable audience in the sense of presuming familiarity with the basic procedures and conceptualizations pertaining to these areas.


Laws:

The third objective is to code the root-abstracts in such a way that they can be sorted into subsets corresponding to classes of experimental operations and conceptual issues.  All of the information is stored in a computer in such a way that not only can any errors of omission or commission be corrected, but new information can be added as it becomes available.


Boundary Conditions


A very critical feature of any system in science is the specification of its boundary conditions.  Because the conceptual domain of science is indefinitely large, and because the conditions under which scientific principles may operate are indeed infinite, a manageable systematic analysis necessarily pertains only to some limited range.  At least in principle, these limitations should be explicit and definite.  Most importantly, the boundary conditions should be stated in terms of the permissible experimental operations and the allowable conditions of those operations, rather that in terms of outcomes.  Although these points are obvious in the abstract, in actual practice, they are not infrequently ignored.


It should be clear that, for an empirical system of the present kind, the boundary conditions are almost entirely matters of convenience.  That is to say, the domain of "Animal Learning and Motivation" as previously described has fuzzy boundaries and the ideal of making these decisions in a completely atheoretical manner has undoubtedly not been achieved.  My ultimate purpose in this endeavor should not be hidden; I believe that a reductive theory involving the introduction of hypothetical constructs will prove to be not only useful, but necessary to make the myriads of empirical phenomena comprehensible.  Because I am personally committed to such an orientation, there undoubtedly are instances where I have included material that fits with my theoretical hunches and excluded material because of theoretical intuitions.  I know of no way to guarantee objectivity in these regards.  But there is this consolation: Others are free to add new information into the system and thereby set the challenge to develop a theory that will also encompass those phenomena.  Accordingly, this is at best a first approximation to the ideal systematic empirical analysis.


In order to make the domain finite, I have a temporal limitation as one of the boundary conditions: only publications between 1900 and 2000 are included.  Even so, there are many relevant publications that remain to be added to the system, and a great many root abstracts remain to be written.  Furthermore, the aforementioned coding system has not yet been fully implemented in the materials.  I hope that anyone viewing the system at this time will be an optimist and be encouraged that the glass is now almost half full, rather than focusing on the obvious fact that it is still at least half empty!


Postscript: The enterprise that the Quad-l attempts to identify, summarize, and systematize is based on several working hypotheses. One of these is determinism, the contention that the behavior of organisms is a part of nature and, as such, is subject to natural laws. A corrolary of this hypothesis is that these laws can be inferred from the systematic experimental and conceptual analysis of the methods of natural science.


A second hypothesis is evolution, the contention that all extant organisms have developed in relation to their ecological niche and are to some extent unique. A corrolary of this hypothesis is that there are commonalities at some level of abstraction among the laws of the behavior of different animal species.


A further hypothesis is that at least the human organism is capable of covert behavior such as feeling, thinking, and reasoning. A corrolary of this hypothesis is that such behavior obeys the same basic laws as those of overt behavior.


These are called "working" hypotheses because there is no way to test them directly; one can only assume them to be true and proceed with the awareness that they may not apply in all situations. As a possible example, consider the fact that I personally believe that there must be, in some sense, a Higher Power that gives, again in some sense, meaning and purpose to existence. Because of my cultural heritage, I call this Higher Power, God, but the corresponding term in most of the world's religions could equally be used. However, my God is not, to the best of my knowledge, the same as the Higher Power of any of the organized religions, differing for example from most Christian faiths because my God would never intervene in such a way as to violate natural laws. This means that a so-called miracle will either be understood by science or is an illusion, an exaggeration, or a fantasy.


My purpose is not to engage in a religious debate. Rather, I want simply to explore the basis for such a belief. More particularly, because religious beliefs must be acquired, one can ask whether the principles implied by the Quad-L suffice to account for one's belief (or non-belief) in a Higher Power.


I called this a "postscript" because I had earlier identified the domain of the Quad-L as "basic learning processes" and hence not including (presumably) uniquely human behavior. Hence, this would be an exercise in extending the domain beyond its initial boundaries. Perhaps prematurely.


After reviewing the domain identified in the Index, I think the most likely relevant basic principle of learning is imitation (observational learning.) This is reasonable because, as a result of aperiodic attendance at Sunday School as a youth and Church as an adult, I have certainly been exposed to a number of people who profess a similar belief. Perhaps one of them impressed me sufficiently that I have attempted to imitate his or her faith.


There are two difficulties with this interpretation of the origin of my belief in an eternal, omnipotent God. First, imitation is only possible when the requisite behaviors are already in one's repertoire. Watching someone else do something (e.g., wiggle an ear) does not bestow the capability to perform that act. Hence, one must still account in some other way for the initial acquisition of a religious belief.


Secondly, beliefs are, by their very nature, unobservable to others. There is thus no way that I could have imitated the actual inner value system of someone else. To be sure, one can sing religious songs, read religious passages, or repeat religious prayers, but doing these things does not require a true belief. Accordingly, although the seed my belief may have been planted through observation, it must have been acquired through some other means.


Similar problems arise with other interpretations based on basic principles of learning. For example, for beliefs to be treated as an instance of classical conditioning, one would have to identify some stimulus event that naturally elicits a belief in a Higher Power. Although it is said that there is no such person as an atheist in a foxhole, I cannot profess to have had a true relevation. And if a belief is treated as an operant, God cannot reinforce a belief unless such a "response" is emitted.


Others may ultimately acccount for religious beliefs in scientific terms, but I have to entertain the possiblity that some beliefs are the result of a true "free" choice that is uniquely human and that is not mimicked in any overt behavior. Hence, they may violate all of the aforementioned working hypotheses. If so, the boundary conditions of the Quad-L are further restricted.(/P>

Actually, the perceptive person will note that almost all of the references in the Quad-L as currently constructed concern associative lerning. There is very little attention paid to "pure" perceptual learning or "pure" motor learning. Associative learning simply presumes that both perception and performance are already available to the organism. There is much to be done if science is to encompass all forms of human behavior.


Consider the conundrum posed by the attempt to prove the logical impossibility of a science of human behavior by contending that the behavior of an anti-predictably-motivated person could not be predicted by science. Because science is public, such a person always knows the scientific prediction and could foil any system. Part of the resolution of this conundrum is to recognize first that the person must know that his or her behavior is being predicted and then must value proving the point more than that associated with conforming to the scientific prediction. Scientific knowledge is limited and does not presume to deal with unanswerable questions.


December 31, 2000