Learning and Behavior

Mark E. Bouton is the Robert B. Lawson Green & Gold Professor of Psychology at the University of Vermont. He is a leading researcher in the field of animal learning, cognition, and behavior. He received his B.A. from Williams College and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington. For many years, his research has investigated the relationships between context, conditioning, memory, and motivation, with a special emphasis on inhibitory processes like extinction. Some of his scientific writing has focused on the connections between modern learning theory, neuroscience, and issues in cognitive behavioral therapy (e.g., panic disorder, fear and anxiety, relapse after therapy). He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a James McKeen Cattell Scholar, a University Scholar at the University of Vermont, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Stanford), and he is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. He was Editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, the field's most prestigious journal, from 1998 until 2003. He has taught an up-to-date course in Learning, which is given away in his book, for over three decades.

1. Learning Theory: What It Is and How It Got This Way.- 2. Learning and Adaptation.- 3. The Nuts and Bolts of Classical Conditioning.- 4. Theories of Conditioning.- 5. Whatever Happened to Behavior Anyway?.- 6. Are the Laws of Conditioning General?.- 7. Behavior and Its Consequences.- 8. How Stimuli Guide Instrumental Action.- 9. The Motivation of Instrumental Action.- 10. A Synthetic Perspective on Instrumental Action.