Learning To Do Without Cognitiony

In this paper we show that a phenomenon in animal learning theory (the outcome devaluation eeect) for which there is dispute over whether explicit representations and symbolic reasoning is required for its performance , does not require such things. This is done using a reactive motivational model, previously inspired from ethological thought, to which some simple reinforcement learning rules are attached. An instan-tation of the model is used as the control system of an animat in a spatial computer simulation and it succeeds in learning the necessary parameters to allow the behaviour sequencing system to exhibit the phenomenon .