The evaluative response: Primitive but necessary

Summary-We do not believe the claim that “evaluative conditioning is a qualitatively distinct form of classical conditioning ” [Davey (1994). Behaviour Research and Therapy, 32,291-2991. We view all classical conditioning as a learning process which leads organisms to assign a positive or negative value to previously neutral stimuli and to respond to them accordingly. The evaluative response is a necessary component of this process and hence it is central to all classical conditioning, not a separate type. Davey concentrates on a signal-based information processing view of learning, i.e. the formation of linear associations between CS and UCS of which human subjects are aware and which they can verbalize. We propose a more primitive and more general model in which stimulus evaluation (like/dislike) occurs with a minimal degree of processing, and enters into a representation of stimulus (CS and UCS) and response (CR and UCR) characteristics which is redintegrative rather than associative. Davey’s (1994) thesis is that classical conditioning is a complex cognitive activity requiring controlled information processing. His prototypical model supposes that the CR is mediated by an internal representation of the UCS and, in humans, that the CS-UCS association is reflected by conscious awareness of the CS-UCS contingency. The prototypical experiment in human classical conditioning is alleged to be the differential electrodermal paradigm. Conditioning i