Distinction between explicit (mediated/declarative) and implicit (unmediated) learning
Role of the hippocampus
Phenomena
Trace eyeblink conditioning
Eliminated by hippocampal lesions
Disrupted in patients with hippocampal damage (Clark & Squire)
Requires conscious mediation
Cognitive mediation in animals
A cognitive interpretation of the distinction between S-R and S-S learning
Evidence a CS evokes an image of the US (Holland)
Mediated acquisition
Mediated extinction
Spatial learning in rats
Radial arm maze
Evidence for durable memory
Evidence they rely on spatial information
Morris water maze
Context conditioning
Hippocampal lesions disrupt context conditioning but not learning about an embedded cue
Hippocampal lesions a month after training do not affect context conditioning
Theories
Role of configural relations
Distinction between linearly separable and non-linearly separable problems
Rudy & Sutherland (1995)
Hippocampus: rapid, automatic, encoding of configural relations
Cortical mechanisms: slow, incremental, process
Only encodes configural relations if forced to by task demands