THE DEVELOPMENT AND GENERALIZATION OF "CONTINGENCY AWARENESS" IN EARLY INFANCY: SOME HYPOTHESES

Imagine a living thing whose behavioral repertoire is such that it pro vides no possibility of eliciting rewards from the external world. Rewarding stimulus events could be experienced but could not be produced. With the provision of a benevolent environment, the organism would survive but would not learn in the sense of acquiring behavioral adaptations which pro duce rewards. I propose that in certain ways this situation is descriptive of the...