Developmental psychobiology and behaviour theory: Reciprocating influences.

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Abstract
This paper addresses the topic of levels of functioning in ontogeny in the context of a large body of normative data, demonstrating the ages of first appearance in infancy of a number of reward-schedule effects, all of which have been observed in adult rats and some in other species including humans. An introductory section discusses levels of functioning in animals and humans, with particular reference in the latter case to neuropsychological theories of memory function. This is followed by a summary presentation of the normative developmental data on reward-schedule effects; earlier work implicating the hippocampal formation in some of these effects, and in general in reactions to discrepancy; and our work on the effects of hippocampal lesions and of exposure to alcohol in utero on single-alternation patterning and on the partial reinforcement extinction effect. These latter results suggest a modification of Frustration Theory, which gains some support from work that relates differential hippocampal granule-cell genesis to exposure to a number of reward-schedule effects in infancy.