The conditioning connection.

Abstract

In 1948 Konorski argued that conditioning reflects the strengthening of a connection between elements representing the signal and the reinforcer, as a result of the coincidence of activity in the signal element with a rise in activity in the reinforcer element. This Konorskian process represents one way of implementing an error-correcting learning rule and thus, unlike a simple Hebbian process, anticipates selective conditioning, such as that observed in Kamin's blocking procedure. However, the Konorskian process, in common with other error-correcting learning rules, fails to explain why blocking is attenuated by 'surprising' changes in reinforcement conditions that should not augment activity in the reinforcer element. Rather, the reinforcer-specificity of such unblocking suggests the operation of an associability process by which stored information about the past predictive history of the signal is expressed at the connection between signal and reinforcer elements to modulate changes in the connection weight.