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
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(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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