Latent Inhibition and Conditioned Attention Theory

Book excerpt: R.E. Lubow offers a complete survey of the basic data that comprise the latent inhibition effect, and a review of theories that attempt to explain it. He then elaborates on his own Conditioned Attention Theory and derives applications for learned helplessness and schizophrenia. Latent inhibition is an exquisitely simple, robust, and pervasive behavioral phenomenon--the reduced ability of an organism to learn new associations to previously inconsequential stimuli. It has been demonstrated in a variety of animals, including humans, across many different learning tasks. The ease of demonstrating the latent inhibition effect, on the one hand, is matched by the difficulty of incorporating it into contemporary conditioning and learning theories, on the other hand. A wide range of experimental psychologists and neuroscientists will find this a stimulating and useful book for themselves and their students.