Purpose:  The purpose of this course is to explore how assumed
content, procedures, and function have played a critical role in the
definition, study, and applications of learning. Attention will be
placed on overlapping processes in human and nonhuman organisms.

Considerations:  The assumed content of Learning has ranged from
stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response connections to conditional
probabilities of stimulus and response relations, from context and
occasion-setting representations to spatial and temporal mapping,
and from simple strengthening of motor output to the adaptation,
refinement, regulation, and extension of neural and behavioral
systems. Topics include Simple Cue Exposure, Pavlovian Pairings of
Cues, Contexts, Reward, Shaping, Operant Linkage and Discrimination,
developmental changes, and co-regulation of expression.  Emphasis
will be placed on adaptive and goal-oriented characteristics, as
well as maladaptive, dysfunctional, and costly behaviors and beliefs.
	
Topics and Readings:  The largest single source of reading will be
preliminary chapters of the upcoming revision of Shettleworth’s text
(Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior--Oxford University Press)
covering material on perception and attention,  habituation,
discrimination and classification, causality and learning, spatial
learning, timing and counting, foraging, and social learning and
communication.  Added topics will include ecological-evolutionary
interpretations of tuning apparatus and procedures, cue control of
addiction processes, the role of learning in contrast, fear and
panic, and common substrates of Pavlovian and operant conditioning,
and treatments of intrusive behaviors such as OCD in humans and
stereotypy in zoo animals.

Qualifications: Graduate Standing, Advanced undergraduates may be
admitted with instructors permission.  It will be very helpful if
students have had exposure to learning in an undergraduate course. In
general, I expect students to have and/or develop areas of expertise
and interest that allow them to contribute to the rest of the class.

Format and Meeting time:  The seminar will meet twice a week for 75
minutes, TR at 2:30 to 3:45 in Room 115.  One meeting will most
likely be for lecture/discussion, and one primarily for presentations
by students and discussion.

Requirements:  In addition to reading, presentations and
participating in discussion, students will be responsible for a
research review and a conceptual/experimental proposal on a learning
topic.  Students will also be responsible, as needed, for brief
written exercises to clarify their understanding of basic material.