Zeiler, M. D. (2002).
The function, mechanism, and evolution of learning and behavior: A review of Sara J. Shettleworth's Cognition, evolution, and behavior.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
78, 225-235.
Behavior is a property of living animals and is therefore a
biological phenomenon. This book shows us what it looks like to
have a truly biological science of behavior. Such a science needs
to discover the laws that control behavior as it is occurring,
and it is this that behavior analysts and other psychologists
interested in animal behavior and learning have done so well. The
science also needs to explain, however, the role that behavior
plays in the life of the individual and in the existence of the
species, and this has not been part of the agenda for most
psychologists. Shettleworth addresses all of these questions
about behavior. She views learning in terms of what it
accomplishes for the individual and then provides insight into
its causal laws and its evolution. All of this is accomplished
with a critical eye and unremitting rigor. These accomplishments
occur in the context of a theory based on a unique combination of
domain-general and domain-specific processes that takes a major
step in the direction of showing what students of animal behavior
and animal learning have to offer each other.
Key words: learning, adaptive value, evolution, domain
specificity, domain generality, behavior systems