ABSTRACT
Neither 1) nor 2) is particularly contentious: general psychological theorists going back at least a century, current information processing theory, contemporary learning theory and everyday belief all agree that many responses which are frequently repeated under similar conditions become automatic in the sense of occurring without awareness of either the involvement of any decision process or the occurrence of the response. This is a separate issue from that of whether a response can become autonomous in the sense of independence from the response-reinforcer contingency which first established the response; this issue is contentious at present (Dickinson, 1985: Colwill & Rescorla, 1985).
