The Psychology of Associative Learning

Problems in the Behavioural Sciences

by David Shanks

It is hard to think of any significant aspect of our lives that is not influenced by what we have learned in the past. Of fundamental importance is our ability to learn the ways in which events are related to one another, called associative learning. This book provides a fresh look at associative learning theory and reviews extensively the advances made over the past twenty years. The Psychology of Associative Learning begins by establishing that the human associative learning system is rational in the sense that it accurately represents event relationships. David Shanks goes on to consider the informational basis of learning, in terms of the memorization of instances, and discusses at length the application of connectionist models to human learning. The book concludes with an evaluation of the role of rule induction in associative learning. This will be essential reading for graduate students and researchers in psychology and the behavioral sciences.

Genres: Textbooks

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 1995

Reviews

[Chrissy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful review of different theories and models of basic human learning processes, tying together multiple levels of analysis (mechanistic, theoretic, connectionist modelling) in a coherent and fair manner, as well as outlining the challenges to those approaches. Where other researchers would have favoured their preferred level of analysis at the expense of equally valid alternatives, Shanks considers the likelihood that many of them are simultaneously valid explanations of behaviour, and that pitting a normative model against an associative one, for example, shortchanges them both.

It was a super informative read for my thesis work, and helped me understand some models (i.e. probabilistic contrast model) that I hadn't paid much attention to before.