On testing current cognitive theories of Pavlovian conditioning in the human Pavlovian autonomic transswitching preparation.

The Rescorla-Wagner theory, which Lachnit and Kimmel's transswitching evidence has apparently contradicted, is fundamentally cognitive, inasmuch as it views Pavlovian conditioning as "the learning of relations among events". Kimmel and Lachnit's criticism that Lovibond's theory-saving defence "does little more than immunize a theory against problematic empirical findings" is analogous to the charge of circularity in explanation that cognitive, Tolmanian researchers used to bring against their S-R, Hullian opponents. A way out of the circle in human autonomic transswitching is to measure the cognitive process of relational conditional stimulus-unconditional stimulus contingency learning throughout the experiment, as has been done in simple Pavlovian human autonomic conditioning, although it may also be desirable to check whether such continuous measurement changes the basic transswitching phenomenon itself. The other issue briefly commented on is the relation between animal and human experiments and theoretical formulations, where the more basic distinction may be not between animals and humans, but between conditional stimulus-instrumental response and conditional stimulus-conditional response preparations. The latter preparations (of which human electrodermal transswitching is an instance) appear to be sensitive to S-R as well as (cognitive) S-S factors.