ABSTRACT
Many vertebrates and invertebrates display behavioral changes follozving exposure to Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning procedures. These behavioral changes are generally thought 2to represent the output of an associative learning process. Thus, Pavlovian conditioning leads to the formation of stimulus-outcome associations and instrumental learning leads to the development of response-outcome associations. In this chapter, I discuss a relatively unappreciated criticism of the conventional view that stimulus-outcome and response-outcome learning may be inferred simply on the basis of standard operational criteria. Then, I describe two techniques that are popular in the modern conditioning literature for detecting associations betzveen a stimulus and its consequent outcome and between a response and its consequent outcome. One of these techniques depends on the identity of the outcome and the other technique depends on the value of the outcome. Finally, I reviezo the possible limitations regarding the use of these methodologies for detecting associative learning.
