Learning and behavior a contemporary synthesis pdf

3 editions of this work

He includes substantial integration of evolutionary framework and connectionist models of cognitive science into the topics of more traditional learning texts. While the addition of an evolutionary framework is much appreciated and helps give the bigger picture context of how different learning mechanisms came to be, the extensive discussion of cognitive psychology and connectionist approaches within the text feels out of place at times. The connections between fields seem productive, but the extent of the connectionist model seems excessive and often feels tangential to the learning topics at hand. The book is extremely theory driven. Bouton does a nice job of providing varied examples in humans and animals, but the approach to learning is very much an academic rather than a practical one.

.

.