UCLA

My laboratory investigates the psychological mechanisms of learning, memory, and cognition in animals. Our behavioral techniques include the use of associative learning procedures, such as Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning with rats, pigeons, and people. Specific issues currently being addressed include the role of associative processes in cognition, departures from rational behavior, the role of information on learning, choice by exclusion and fast mapping, behavioral variability in learning, behavioral insight and problem solving, and pigeon painting.

Current Techniques: Automated behavioral testing equipment, including touchscreen operant chambers to study pigeon behavior, conditioning chambers to study rat behavior, and computer games to study humans.

Focus: Much of my work is comparative in nature. In addition to the traditional focus on learning and memory mechanisms in animals, I also mine the pre-comparative research literature in humans to find topics of interest to explore from an evolutionary and comparative perspective in nonhuman animals.

Blaisdell & Fast-UCOMM 111019