title: An assessment of Gallistel's (2012) rationalistic account of extinction phenomena.
abstract: Gallistel (2012) asserts that animals use rationalistic reasoning (i.e., information theory and Bayesian inference) to make decisions that underlie select extinction phenomena. Rational processes are presumed to lead to evolutionarily optimal behavior. Thus, Gallistel's model is a type of optimality theory. But optimality theory is only a theory, a theory about an ideal organism, and its predictions frequently deviate appreciably from observed behavior of animals in the laboratory and the real world. That is, behavior of animals is often far from optimal, as is evident in many behavioral phenomena. Hence, appeals to optimality theory to explain, rather than illuminate, actual behavior are misguided.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Binghamton, SUNY-Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA. rmiller@binghamton.edu
authors.forename: Ralph R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D005108:Extinction, Psychological; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology