Main description:

Latent inhibition is an exquisitely simple, robust and pervasive behavioural phenomenon - the reduced ability of an organism to learn new associations to previously inconsequential stimuli. It has been demonstrated in a variety of animals, including humans, across many different learning tasks. The ease of demonstrating the latent inhibition effect, on the one hand, is matched by the difficulty of incorporating it into contemporary conditioning and learning theories, on the other. R. E. Lubow offers a complete survey of the basic data that comprise the latent inhibition effect and a review of theories that attempt to explain it. He then elaborates his own Conditioned Attention Theory and derives applications for learned helplessness and schizophrenia. A wide range of experimental psychologists and neuroscientists will find this a stimulating and useful book for themselves and their students.

Contents:

Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. Latent inhibition testing procedures; 3. Variables affecting latent inhibition; 4. Organismic variables affecting latent inhibition; 5. Associative learning tests of the effects of stimulus preexposure in children and adults; 6. Neural substrates of latent inhibition; 7. Theories and explanations of latent inhibition in animals; 8. Conditioned attention theory of latent inhibition; 9. Conditioned attention theory as applied to latent inhibition in humans; 10. Some applications of conditioned attention theory: learned helplessness and schizophrenia; Notes; References; Author index; Subject index.