ABSTRACT
The notion of 'higher cognitive processes' in conditioning raises a number of questions. What do we conceive these processes to be? What do the processes have to do with the presumably more basic ones of conditioning? Why is it timely to consider the relationship between basic mechanisms of association and higher processes? To set the context for what have to be very limited treatment of these matters, this chapter comments on each of these questions. It takes higher processes to be those of attention, perception, and memory, which are presumed to be basic to the mental life of human beings and perhaps manifest also in animals. But henceforth it refers simply to 'cognitive' processes in order not to beg the question concerning their relationship to those of conditioning. Within the process orientation, two principal aspects of the potential relationships between conditioning and cognitive processes are discussed.
