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EXPLANATORY POWERS OF THE FRACTIONAL ANTEDATING RESPONSE MECHANISM
Author(s) -
RITCHIE BENBOW F.
Publication year - 1959
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1959.tb00676.x
Subject(s) - psychology , mechanism (biology) , cognitive psychology , social psychology , epistemology , philosophy
The fractional antedating response mechanism is used by Spence to explain the fact that rats can anticipate the consequences of their responses and can make choices based on these anticipations. The present paper examines the logic of this explanation, shows the kinds of assumptions required by it, and derives an experimental test of this explanation. This derivation assumes that fractional eating reactions in black and in white boxes are different reactions. While this assumption is not required to explain Kendler's experiment or Spence's paradigm, it is required to explain the latent learning and reasoning phenomena in many other experiments. As a consequence, the negative results of the experiment reported in this paper suggest either that the fractional reaction explanation is false, or that it is trivial in the sense that it is appropriate only to those latent learning phenomena where the alternative consequences are distinguished by different consummatory responses.