Emotion: Sensory Representation,Reinforcement, and the Temporal Lobe

Abstract

In this article emphasis is placed on the reciprocal relationships between reinforcers and the central representations of extrinsic stimuli. It is argued that an understanding of these processes will prove crucial in an understanding of how adaptive stimulus representations can be formed and how such representations can come to elicit emotions. It is proposed that the evolutionary origin of emotions, which are primarily Seen as energising signals of survival value, arose from the need to Sensitise an animal in the absence of appropriate signals of reinforcement. Evidence is provided that many of these functions take place in the primate temporal lobe.     

Deciding between accounts of the selection task: A reply to Oaksford (2002)

In this paper we report on our attempts to fit the optimal data selection (ODS) model (Oaksford & Chater, 1994; Oaksford, Chater, & Larkin, 2000) to the selection task data reported in Feeney and Handley (2000) and Handley, Feeney, and Harper (2002). Although Oaksford (2002b) reports good fits to the data described in Feeney and Handley (2000), the model does not adequately capture the data described in Handley et al. (2002). Furthermore, across all six of the experiments modelled here, the ODS model does not predict participants' behaviour at the level of selection rates for individual cards. Finally, when people's probability estimates are used in the modelling exercise, the model adequately captures only 1 out of 18 conditions described in Handley et al. We discuss the implications of these results for models of the selection task and claim that they support deductive, rather than probabilistic, accounts of the task.