ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews Jerzy Konorski's thinking on inhibition. Particular attention is paid to his views as represented in the 1948 book, because those views seem less widely appreciated than his later ideas. It discusses recurring issues in the study of inhibition, the role of inhibition in extinction, and the degree to which learned inhibition and excitation are parallel processes. The chapter argues that Konorski's views provide a profitable framework within which to consider these issues and to guide their future exploration. Konorski's treatment of conditioned inhibition was largely analogous. The chapter views the learning of connections between the classical conditioning (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US) centers, but in this case the nature of the connections is inhibitory rather than excitatory. Conditioned inhibition was viewed as influencing performance by modifying the relationship between the number of excitatory associations and the activation of the US center. Accounts preceding Konorski often described inhibition in terms quite different from those applied to conditioned excitation.
