Exploring Explicit Learning Strategies: A Dissociative Framework for Research.

ABSTRACT: To explain learning, comparative researchers invoke an associative construct by which immediate reinforcement strengthens animal's adaptive responses. In contrast, cognitive researchers freely acknowledge humans' explicit-learning capability to test and confirm hypotheses even lacking direct reinforcement. We describe a new dissociative framework that may stretch animals' learning toward the explicit pole of cognition. We discuss the neuroscience of reinforcement-based learning and suggest the possibility of disabling a dominant form of reinforcement-based discrimination learning. In that vacuum, researchers may have an opportunity to observe animals' explicit learning strategies (i.e., hypotheses, rules, task self-construals). We review initial research using this framework showing explic

SUBMITTER: Church BA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8192072 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature