Pavlovian Feed-Forward Mechanisms: BBS Call for Commentators

Stevan Harnad harnad at coglit.ecs.soton.ac.uk
Wed Apr 7 16:15:45 EDT 1999


        Below is the abstract of a forthcoming BBS target article

       *** please see also 5 important announcements about new BBS
       policies and address change at the bottom of this message) ***

    PAVLOVIAN FEED-FORWARD MECHANISMS IN THE CONTROL OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

        by Michael Domjan, Brian Cusato, & Ronald Villarreal

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be BBS Associates or nominated by a BBS Associate. To
be considered as a commentator for this article, to suggest other
appropriate commentators, or for information about how to become a BBS
Associate, please send EMAIL by April 8th to:

    bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk

      or write to [PLEASE NOTE SLIGHTLY CHANGED ADDRESS]:

    Behavioral and Brain Sciences
    ECS: New Zepler Building
    University of Southampton
    Highfield, Southampton
    SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/
    ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/
    ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/
    gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals


If you are not a BBS Associate, please send your CV and the name of a
BBS Associate (there are currently over 10,000 worldwide) who is
familiar with your work. All past BBS authors, referees and
commentators are eligible to become BBS Associates.

To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection
with a WWW browser, anonymous ftp or gopher according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.

_____________________________________________________________

 
    PAVLOVIAN FEED-FORWARD MECHANISMS IN THE CONTROL OF SOCIAL BEHAVIOR


        Michael Domjan, Brian Cusato, & Ronald Villarreal

        Department of Psychology
        University of Texas
        Austin, Texas 78712 U.S.A.
        Tel: 512-471-7702
        Fax: 512-471-6175
        Domjan at psy.utexas.edu


    ABSTRACT: The conceptual and investigative tools that are brought
    to bear on the analysis of social behavior are expanded by
    integrating biological theory, control systems theory, and
    Pavlovian conditioning. Biological theory has focused on the costs
    and benefits of social behavior from ecological and evolutionary
    perspectives. In contrast, control systems theory is concerned with
    how machines achieve a particular goal or purpose. The accurate
    operation of a system often requires feed-forward mechanisms that
    adjust system performance in anticipation of future inputs.
    Pavlovian conditioning is ideally suited to serve this function in
    behavioral systems. Pavlovian mechanisms have been demonstrated in
    various aspects of sexual behavior, maternal lactation, and infant
    suckling. Pavlovian conditioning of agonistic behavior has been
    also reported, and Pavlovian processes may be similarly involved in
    social play and social grooming. In addition, several lines of
    evidence indicate that Pavlovian conditioning can increase the
    efficiency and effectiveness of social interactions, thereby
    improving the cost/benefit ratio. The proposed integrative approach
    serves to extend Pavlovian concepts beyond the traditional domain
    of discrete secretory and other physiological reflexes to complex
    real-world behavioral interactions and helps apply abstract
    laboratory analyses of the mechanisms of associative learning to
    the daily challenges animals face as they interact with one another
    in their natural environment.

    KEYWORDS: social behavior, biological theory, control theory,
    feed-forward mechanisms, learning theory, Pavlovian conditioning,
    aggression, sexual behavior, nursing and lactation, social play,
    social grooming

____________________________________________________________

To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable from the World Wide
Web or by anonymous ftp from the US or UK BBS Archive.
Ftp instructions follow below. Please do not prepare a commentary on
this draft. Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant
expertise you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the
article.

The URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/
    http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.domjan.html
    ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.domjan
    ftp://ftp.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/bbs/Archive/bbs.domjan

To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp ftp.princeton.edu
   or
ftp 128.112.128.1
   When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
   Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
   yourlogin at yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
   To show the available files, type:
ls
   Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.domjan
   When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit

____________________________________________________________


         ***  FIVE IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS  ***

------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) There have been some very important developments in the 
    area of Web archiving of scientific papers very recently.
    Please see:

Science:
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/science.html
Nature:
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/nature.html
American Scientist:
           http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/amlet.html
Chronicle of Higher Education:
           http://www.chronicle.com/free/v45/i04/04a02901.htm

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(2) All authors in the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences are
    strongly encouraged to archive all their papers (on their
    Home-Servers as well as) on CogPrints:

http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/

    It is extremely simple to do so and will make all of our papers
    available to all of us everywhere at no cost to anyone.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(3) BBS has a new policy of accepting submissions electronically.

    Authors can specify whether they would like their submissions
    archived publicly during refereeing in the BBS under-refereeing
    Archive, or in a referees-only, non-public archive.

    Upon acceptance, preprints of final drafts are moved to the
    public BBS Archive:

ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/.WWW/index.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/

--------------------------------------------------------------------
(4) BBS has expanded its annual page quota and is now appearing
    bimonthly, so the service of Open Peer Commentary can now be be
    offered to more target articles. The BBS refereeing procedure is
    also going to be considerably faster with the new electronic
    submission and processing procedures. Authors are invited to submit
    papers to:

    Email:   bbs at cogsci.soton.ac.uk

    Web:     http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk
             http://bbs.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/

    INSTRUCTIONS FOR AUTHORS:

http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/instructions.for.authors.html      

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(5) Call for Book Nominations for BBS Multiple Book Review

    In the past, Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) journal had only
    been able to do 1-2 BBS multiple book treatments per year, because
    of our limited annual page quota. BBS's new expanded page quota
    will make it possible for us to increase the number of books we
    treat per year, so this is an excellent time for BBS Associates and
    biobehavioral/cognitive scientists in general to nominate books you
    would like to see accorded BBS multiple book review.

    (Authors may self-nominate, but books can only be selected on the
    basis of multiple nominations.) It would be very helpful if you
    indicated in what way a BBS Multiple Book Review of the book(s) you
    nominate would be useful to the field (and of course a rich list of
    potential reviewers would be the best evidence of its potential
    impact!).



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