ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses theoretical as well as methodological questions in the study of association. It explores various kinds of research yield evidence consistent with the connectionist and the cognitive position on the structure of associations. The chapter continues Jerzy Konorski's consideration of evidence from introspection, from the direct application of conditioning procedures, and from multistage studies that evaluate associations learned during an early stage of the experiment by the application of conditioning procedures during the later stages of the experiment. He proposes other methods of study to assist us in providing more complete information about all of the associations that are formed in us or in others. To add some substance to methodological discussion and to define the nature of association, the chapter examines recent research concerned with learned irrelevance and simultaneous conditioning. It demonstrates the discrimination of spatiotemporal compounds of events from one another and from their elements in the differentiation of responding observed in many of the experiments.
