SYMPOSIUM ON BEHAVIOR SYSTEMS: LEARNING, NEUROPHYSIOLOGY, AND DEVELOPMENT Introduction

There are a number of useful accounts of learned behavior in animals: a laboratory-associationist approach concerned with general principles of association and reinforcement, principles that hold even in artificial environments and with arbitrary stimuli and responses; an adaptive-evolutionary approach that focuses on the function of learned behavior, both in terms of its local expression and in terms of the evolution of mechanisms and processes that predispose and constrain learning; and a developmental approach that emphasizes changes in processing and behavior that are difficult to reverse, especially those based on early stimulus input. Arguments could easily be made for other worthwhile accounts: for example, a cognitive approach that focuses on memory representations and stimulus processing, and a regulatory approach concerned with maintenance of behavior and compensatory reactions to environmental constraint.