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Cited by 732Neural and Behavioral Psychology StudiesBehavioral and Psychological StudiesNeurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior

How adaptive behavior is produced: a perceptual-motivational alternative to response reinforcements

Bindra, Dalbir·1978·Behavioral and Brain Sciences
DOI 10.1017/s0140525x00059380
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Abstract

Abstract The sway that the response-reinforcement framework (Spencer, Thorndike, Hull, Skinner) has held on the behavioral sciences for nearly a hundred years is finally ending. The strength of this framework lay in providing concepts and methods for studying the effects of hedonic (reinforcing) stimuli on the repetition of specified responses acquired in instrumental training situations of various kinds. Its weakness lay in the invalidity of its central assumptions, stimulus-response association and response-reinforcement, which could not deal with motor-equivalence and flexibility (or “intelligence”) in behavior. To the four decades of incisive criticism on particular theoretical and empirical grounds, a more comprehensive challenge to the response-reinforcement framework is now added by the newer ideas about the nature of cognitive, motivational, and response-production processes that have emerged from the work of ethologists, neuroscientists, and cognitive psychologists. An alternative framework, incorporating the newer ideas, is clearly needed. The particular framework proposed here is based on the ideas of perceptual learning of stimulus-stimulus correlations and of a motivational (rather than reinforcing) role of hedonic (incentive) stimuli. According to it, an act is produced when its act-assembly is activated by a pexgo (perceptual representation) of a certain eliciting stimulus complex (ES). When certain eliciting stimuli are correlated with incentive stimuli, they acquire motivational properties that serve to strengthen the pexgos generated by those eliciting stimuli and thereby increase the probability of activation of the corresponding act-assemblies. Motivation thus influences response production, not by directly instigating “existing” responses, but by modulating the strength of pexgos of eliciting stimuli for the succession of acts that comprise a response. Therefore, a response is always constructed afresh on the basis of current perceptions; not even a stable and stereotyped response occurs as a mere activation of a preformed motor program. The topography of any response that emerges is determined by the nature of the motivational state and the momentary spatiotemporal distribution of eliciting stimuli of changing motivational valence. By suggesting that the animal learns the overlapping and nested correlations between the stimulus events that commonly occur in a given situation, and by separating what is learned from the processes of response production, the proposed perceptual-motivational framework seems capable of dealing with the problems of motor equivalence and flexibility in adaptive behavior. Some implications of this approach for further behavioral and brain research on such problems as behavior modification, learning by observation of models, analysis of causality, and search for neural substrates of learning and response production, are outlined.

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  • Approach motivation is triggered by particular incentives in the external world, cues associated with such incentives, and internal representations of these incentives in memory.

    “approach motivation being triggered by: • particular incentives in the external world, e.g.food, drugs, a potential sexual partner. • cues associated with such incentives, e.g. a classically conditioned association between the keyboard on a computer and the appearance of pornographic images on the screen. • internal representations of these incentives in memory.”

    From A motivation model of sex addiction – Relevance to the controversy over the concept (2022) · cites this paper as Bindra, 1978

  • These cue features include the ability of CSs to trigger motivated 'wanting' to seek and consume their reward, and to a degree also trigger hedonic 'liking.'

    “These cue features include the ability of CSs to trigger motivated ‘wanting’ to seek and consume their reward, and to a degree also trigger hedonic ‘liking.’”

    From Evolving Concepts of Emotion and Motivation (2018) · cites this paper as Bindra, 1978

  • Dalbir Bindra posited that Pavlovian incentive cues or conditioned stimuli (CS), which predict pleasant reward as unconditioned stimuli (UCS), take on some of the motivation features of their associated UCS reward.

    “Dalbir Bindra posited in 1970s that Pavlovian incentive cues or conditioned stimuli (CS), which predict pleasant reward as unconditioned stimuli (UCS), take on some of the motivation features of their associated UCS reward (food, drink, sex, drugs, etc.).”

    From Evolving Concepts of Emotion and Motivation (2018) · cites this paper as Bindra, 1978

  • Incentive salience follows psychological rules described originally by the incentive motivation framework posited successively by Dalbir Bindra and Frederick Toates.

    “Incentive salience follows psychological rules described originally by a useful incentive motivation framework posited successively by the psychologists Dalbir Bindra and Frederick Toates (Bindra, 1978; Toates, 1986).”

    From Evolving Concepts of Emotion and Motivation (2018) · cites this paper as Bindra, 1978

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Authors
Bindra, D.
Affiliations
McGill University (CA)
Corresponding author
Bindra, Dalbir
Venue
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
1978-03
Volume
1
Issue
1
Pages
41-52
ISSN
  • 0140-525X (ISSN-L)
  • 1469-1825
DOI
10.1017/s0140525x00059380
OpenAlex
W2007455229
Cited by
732
References
206
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 61 · 2019: 45 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 16
FWCI
23.03
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 11663 d)
Locations
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Behavioral and Psychological Studies
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
Keywords
perceptual learning, motivation in learning, motor equivalence, motor flexibility, adaptive behavior, stimulus-response associations, behavior modification, observational learning, ethology, cognitive psychology, Thorndike, Hull

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