ABSTRACT
Over the millennia, something like a cognitive/associative distinction has manifested itself in a variety of forms, and as a result much discussion about the distinction today involves equivocation and talking-past. Vague dichotomies are notorious in their ability to absorb the hopes and fears of many incompatible perspectives, so a first step to reform is to recognize the terminological diversity in the literature and require theorists to clarify key terms, especially 'cognition' and 'association'. The theory of multiple memory systems has been richly elaborated in the field of cognitive neuroscience and is growing in popularity in comparative psychology itself. A typical difference between cognitive and associative models of the same process is that associative models usually make predictions about fine-grained adjustments in response to the next stimuli observed, whereas cognitive models usually abstract away from this detail to predict the learning outcomes that reliably emerge from diverse learning histories.
