ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on classical conditioning and instrumental training experiments whose outcomes are constrained by the experimenter's choice of particular combinations of conditioned or discriminative stimuli and unconditioned response's (US) or reinforcers. It concerns 'control' procedures, which can be used to differentiate between associative and nonassociative effects, has been prominent in recent discussions of stimulus-reinforcer interactions. The chapter suggests several interpretations of a few sample stimulus-reinforcer interactions. It explains various procedures that can be used to help researchers decide between an account of stimulus-reinforcer interactions in terms of selective associations and several alternative accounts are discussed. The three sample stimulus-reinforcer interactions described in the chapter appears to be associative effects, although only Rick Rescorla and Furrow's experiments on similarity conclusively demonstrate selective associations-or, dependence of the growth rate of an association between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and a US on the particular CS-US combination.
