UCLA Neuroscience Program Ph.D. Admissions Neuroscience Faculty UCLA and Beyond  



Aaron Blaisdell
Learning and Behavior

Email Address:  blaisdell at psych.ucla.edu
Laboratory: http://pigeonrat.psych.ucla.edu

Work Address:
Franz Hall
Phone Numbers:
310-206-5895 Fax
Phone Numbers:
310-267-4589 Office
310-267-4590 Laboratory

Selected Publications:

Blaisdell, A. P. Mechanism through methodology: No madness in the method. International Journal of Comparative Psychology 2005; 18: 23-27.
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Denniston, J. C., Savastano, H. I., Blaisdell, A. P., & Miller, R. R. Cue competition as a retrieval deficit.. Learning and Motivation. 2003; 34: 1-31.
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Blaisdell, A. P. Proteus caught in a (neural) net. Review of Animal learning and cognition: A neural network approach. Nestor A. Schmajuk.. Journal of Mathematical Psychology. 2003; 47: 229-234.
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Cook, R. G., Shaw, R., & Blaisdell, A. P. Dynamic Object Perception by Pigeons: Discrimination of Action in Video Presentations.. Animal Cognition. 2001; 4: 137-146.
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Blaisdell, A.P., Denniston, J. C., & Miller, R. R. Recovery from the Overexpectation Effect: Contrasting Performance-focused and Acquisition-focused Models of Retrospective Revaluation.. Animal Learning & Behavior. 2001; 29: 367-380.
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Blaisdell, A.P., Denniston, J. C., Savastano, H. I., & Miller, R. R. Counterconditioning of an Overshadowed Cue Attenuates Overshadowing of Aversive Associations.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes. 2000; 26: 74-86.
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Blaisdell, A. P., Savastano, H. I., & Miller, R. R. Overshadowing of Explicitly Unpaired Conditioned Inhibition is Disrupted by Preexposure to the Overshadowed Inhibitor.. Animal Learning & Behavior. 1999; 27: 346-357.
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Blaisdell, A. P., Gunther, L. M., & Miller, R. R. Recovery from Blocking Achieved by Extinguishing the Blocking CS.. Animal Learning & Behavior. 1999; 27: 63-76.
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Friedman, B., Blaisdell, A. P., Escobar, M. E., & Miller, R. R. Comparator Mechanisms and Conditioned Inhibition: CS Preexposure Disrupts Pavlovian Conditioned Inhibition but not Explicitly Unpaired Inhibition.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes. 1998; 24: 453-466.
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Denniston, J. C., Blaisdell, A. P., & Miller, R. R. Temporal Coding Affects Transfer of Serial and Simultaneous Inhibitors.. Animal Learning & Behavior. 1998; 26: 336-350.
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Blaisdell, A.P., Denniston, J. C., & Miller, R. R. Temporal Encoding as a Determinant of Overshadowing.. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes. 1998; 24: 72-83.
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Blaisdell, A.P., Denniston, J. C., & Miller, R. R. Unblocking with Qualitative Change of Unconditioned Stimulus.. Learning and Motivation. 1997; 28: 268-279.
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Blaisdell, A. P., Sawa, K., Leising, K. J., & Waldmann, M. R. Causal reasoning in rats. Science. 2006; 311: 1020-1022.
Sawa, K Leising, KJ Blaisdell, AP Sensory preconditioning in spatial learning using a touch screen task in pigeons.. Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes. . 2005; 31(3): 368-75.
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Cook, RG Levison, DG Gillett, SR Blaisdell, AP Capacity and limits of associative memory in pigeons.. Psychonomic bulletin & review. . 2005; 12(2): 350-8.
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Blaisdell, AP Cook, RG Two-item same-different concept learning in pigeons.. Learning & behavior : a Psychonomic Society publication. . 2005; 33(1): 67-77.
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Blaisdell, AP Cook, RG Integration of spatial maps in pigeons.. Animal cognition. . 2005; 8(1): 7-16.
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Denniston, JC Blaisdell, AP Miller, RR Temporal coding in conditioned inhibition: analysis of associative structure of inhibition.. Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes. . 2004; 30(3): 190-202.
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Chang, RC Blaisdell, AP Miller, RR Backward conditioning: mediation by the context.. Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes. . 2003; 29(3): 171-83.
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Blaisdell, AP Miller, RR Conditioned inhibition produced by extinction-mediated recovery from the relative stimulus validity effect: a test of acquisition and performance models of empirical retrospective revaluation.. Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes. . 2001; 27(1): 48-58.
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Blaisdell, AP Denniston, JC Miller, RR Posttraining shifts in the overshadowing stimulus-unconditioned stimulus interval alleviates the overshadowing deficit.. Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes. . 1999; 25(1): 18-27.
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Blaisdell, AP Bristol, AS Gunther, LM Miller, RR Overshadowing and latent inhibition counteract each other: support for the comparator hypothesis.. Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes. . 1998; 24(3): 335-51.
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Research Interest:

I am interested in animal cognition and behavior. My central interest lies in how animals represent their world, how these representations are built, and how they subserve information processes. To answer these questions, my research uses Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning procedures to study how laboratory rats, pigeons, and humans solve problems involving cause-effect relations, how they use temporal and spatial information (e.g., cognitive maps) to make response decisions, and how they construct more complex maps from simpler ones. Preliminary evidence indicates that animals use an inference-like process to build cognitive maps. These proximate mechanisms of behavior (i.e., information processing and response generation) will shed light on how the ultimate (i.e., evolutionary) function of behavior is served.