ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on conditioning, and concentrates on this aspect of Jerzy Konorski's work, while recognizing that he himself would certainly have deplored any arbitrary divisions between his various interests. One of the features of Konorski's work, which probably contributed to its unpopularity in America, was its concern with processes of inhibition. A result of Leon Kamin's work on blocking and Richard Wagner and Rick Rescorla's theoretical and experimental work, the study of the formation of associations has moved to the center of the stage as possibly the most important problem in the study of animal learning. This discussion of Konorski's work and its reception in the West has dealt almost entirely with the period before 1955; this is because, paradoxically, his earlier work is closer to the concerns of modern Western animal psychology than his more recent thinking.
