> At 2:48 PM -0500 12/18/01, Stephen Black wrote: > > >And I'm disappointed that no one here has offered to educate us > >on the current status of research on operant conditioning of > >autonomic responses.
And Paul Brandon replied: > > Doesn't seem to be a whole lot out there. > All I could find in the past five years (searching for <autonomic AND > operant AND conditioning>) were this article and a few applied studies. Thanks for trying, Paul. I find this startling. One of the hottest areas of research at one time now appears to have disappeared without a trace. Does this mean that no one cares whether operant conditioning of autonomic responses is possible any more? Is this what the DiCara-Miller debacle has done to the field? I have one recent textbook of learning (Leahey & Harris, Learning and Cognition, 4th ed. 1997) on my shelf. It has only a brief, confusing, and unconvincing discussion of the issue. OK, here's another: Pierce & Epling _Behavior Analysis and Learning, 2nd ed. 1999. Amazingly, they cite the DiCara/Miller work almost entirely uncritically, reproducing the discredited Miller and DiCara (1967) figure showing heart-rate conditioning. All they say about the issue is that there have been "difficulties" and "Miller has even had problems replicating the results" (cite Miller & Dworkin, 1974, but not Dworkin & Miller, 1986!). They then conclude by affirming that operant conditioning of reflexive responses is possible. This seems an unsatisfactory account to me. It's beginning to look as though there's no acceptable evidence of operant conditioning of autonomic responses. Certainly not if a 1999 textbook has to go back to Miller and DiCara for support. -Stephen ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470 Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661 Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lennoxville, QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy Check out TIPS listserv for teachers of psychology at: http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/psyc/southerly/tips/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
