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The Principles of Learning and Behavior: Active Learning Edition (Sixth Edition)



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Author: Michael P. Domjan

Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing

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Publish Date: March 17, 2009

ISBN-10: 495601993

Pages: 696

File Type: PDF

Language: English

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Book Preface

This edition of The Principles of Learning and Behavior is something of a personal and professional landmark. When I signed the original contract for the book in 1979, I thought I would be lucky to complete the first edition and had no idea that the book would remain a staple in the field for 30 years. Since its first publication, the book has served to introduce students to behavioral mechanisms of learning in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Turkey, Spain, and other European countries. Some of those students have become professors in their own right and have used later editions of the book in their own teaching.

Originally, I had three basic goals in writing the book. The first was to share with students all of the new ideas and findings that I considered so exciting in the area of conditioning and learning. The second was to integrate behavioral learning phenomena with how behavior systems have been shaped by evolution. This second goal provided the rationale for including behavior in the title of the book. The third goal was to provide an eclectic and balanced presentation of the field that was respectful of both the Pavlovian associationist tradition and the Skinnerian behavior-analytic tradition. These three goals have continued to motivate successive editions of the book.

Some books do not change much from one edition to another. That has not been the case with this book. In the first edition, I struggled to get all the facts right and to present them in a coherent fashion. I am still eager to get all the facts right, but I no longer find that task much of a struggle. Instead, the primary challenge is to incorporate new experimental findings and approaches. In the 2nd and 3rd editions, I simply added newly published results. Later editions involved substantial reorganizations of various parts of the book, with older material being deleted in favor of new information. That twofold process not only what to add but what to remove. My apologies to investigators who may find their favorite experiment no longer cited in the book.

A major benefit of the revisions that I have undertaken is that successive editions of the book reflect how the field of learning has evolved in the past 30 years. One of my professorial colleagues recently remarked that he was highly familiar with learning theory because he knew all about Tolman, Guthrie, and Hull. He should read this new edition, as Tolman and Guthrie do not appear, and Hull is only mentioned briefly in favor of more contemporary research. That is not to say that I have ignored historical antecedents; I have not. However, I have ignored the learning theory debates that preoccupied psychologists for much of the twentieth century.

The field of conditioning and learning continues to evolve in significant ways. In the 5th edition, I commented on the great advances that were taking place in studies of the neural mechanisms of learning. Research on the neurobiology of learning continues to be a major area of investigation. My focus all along has been on behavioral mechanisms of learning because the significance of neurobiological processes ultimately rests with how those processes contribute to overt behavior. However, neurobiological findings are mentioned in the text more frequently now, and I am indebted again to Professor James Grau for providing summaries of key neuroscience topics in specially highlighted boxes.

Another major new direction that is evident in the field of learning is the emphasis encouraged by the National Institutes of Health to make the research more directly relevant to human clinical problems. This emphasis on translational research has stimulated a great deal of work on extinction, memory, and drug addiction. I have incorporated many of these new findings and have emphasized applications of the basic research findings to human situations throughout the book


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