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John Garcia
Life of a Neuroethologist and History of Conditioned Taste Aversion
by Stuart R. Ellins Ph.D. (Editor)
John Garcia
Life of a Neuroethologist and History of Conditioned Taste Aversion
by Stuart R. Ellins Ph.D. (Editor)
Published Jan 10, 2007
256 Pages
Genre: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Science & Technology
Book Details
Astonishing answers to unspoken questions revealed!
The life of a Hispanic boy raised in the farmlands of Northern California who achieved great heights as a professor and scientist.
Book Excerpt
As a “neuroethologist,” John Garcia evaluates the behavior of animals, including humans, as diverse organisms that perceive, think, and cope with the demands of their natural habitats. His research attempts to understand the relationships between learning, environment and neuroscience, as opposed to traditional laboratory learning psychologists who reduce the behaviors of all species to generalized Pavlovian symbols as URs and CRs to USs and CSs.
About the Author
Stuart R. Ellins Ph.D. (Editor)
Stuart R. Ellins Ph.D. is a retired University Professor and Psychology Department Chair. His teaching and research in comparative psychobiology brought him in contact with John Garcia who is a pioneer in the field and is the founder of research in taste aversion conditioning. Stuart Ellins' primary research and writing has been in the application of taste aversion conditioning to the management of coyotes and other wildllife.
American Scientist
Imagine that you are dining at a familiar restaurant, and you order a new item on the menu—something that you’ve never tried before—and later that night you become violently ill. What caused you to get sick?
Your illness could have been caused by a touch of the flu, a familiar food that was poorly preserved or prepared, an exposure to a toxin, or a favorite cocktail interacting badly with some medication taken earlier in the day. But even if you are aware of these and other alternative possibilities, there is a high probability that you will blame the novel dish for your illness. Indeed, the taste, and even the thought, of that new menu item may subsequently make your stomach turn, and you may decide never to eat that food again.
No doubt many of us have had this type of experience. Why are we so quick to place the blame for sickness on a novel-tasting food instead of blaming many other equally plausible possibilities? You may be thinking that blaming the unfamiliar food is the most logical response, but why does it seem that way? We’ve eaten new things many times before without becoming ill, and we’ve become ill before without eating anything new. What makes the connection between a novel taste and illness so strong that it can override these other types of experiences?
Answers to these questions, as well as evidence for the reality of the phenomenon itself, were found not in anecdotes but in the results of experiments. Those results shook the foundations of psychology as it existed at the time, and led to a paradigm shift in thinking about how humans and other animals learn in general, and about the conditions under which learning occurs. Our group and others are still exploring the implications of those findings today.
Studies of what would later be termed conditioned taste aversions date back to at least the 1940s. One of the first of these investigations was conducted in support of the British war effort by Char
John Garcia (psychologist)
American psychologist (1917–2012)
For other people with the same name, see John Garcia (disambiguation).
John Garcia (June 12, 1917 – October 12, 2012) was an American psychologist, most known for his research on conditioned taste aversion. Garcia studied at the University of California-Berkeley, where he received his A.B., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in 1955 in his late forties. At his death, he was professor emeritus at University of California, Los Angeles. Previously, he was an assistant professor at California State University at Long Beach, a lecturer in the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, professor and chairman of the Psychology Department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Utah. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Garcia as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, Margaret Floy Washburn, and Robert S. Woodworth.
Early life
Garcia was born to a farm family on June 12, 1917, near Santa Rosa, California. He was a farmer, a cartoonist, a ship fitter, an Air Corps Cadet, an amateur boxer, a high school teacher and a college professor, as well as a research scientist at Harvard Medical School and the Brain Research Institute at UCLA. During World War II he built submarines for the US Navy, and then enlisted in the Army Air Corps.
Garcia was a first-generation American, the son of Spanish immigrants Sara Casasnovas y Unamuno and Benigno Garcia y Rodriguez. By age 20, he was working as a mechanic making 18-wheeler trucks. A few years later he solved the problem of installing mufflers onto submarines and consequently became a ship fitter. During World War II, he joined the United States Army Air Corps and became a pilot; after persistent nausea, he could no longer fly and he finished his term as an in Assessment | Biopsychology | Comparative | Cognitive | Developmental | Language | Individual differences | Personality | Philosophy | Social | Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology Cognitive Psychology:Attention · Decision making · Learning · Judgement · Memory · Motivation · Perception · Reasoning · Thinking - Cognitive processesCognition - OutlineIndex John Garcia (born June 12, 1917) is an American psychologist, most known for his research on taste aversion learning. Garcia studied at the University of California, receiving his Ph.D in 1965. He was appointed Professor Emeritus at University of California at Los Angeles, though he at other points has also been an Assistant Professor at California State College, a Lecturer in the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, Professor and Chairman of the Psychology Department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and Professor of Psychology at the University of Utah. He has over 130 publications. Garcia lived with his parents on their farm. By age 20, he was working as a mechanic making 18-wheeler trucks. A few years later he solved the problem of installing mufflers onto submarines and consequently became a ship fitter. During World War II he joined the United States Army Air Corps and became a pilot; after persistent nausea he could no longer fly and he finished his term as an intelligence specialist. When demobilized, he used the G.I. Bill to pay for his college tuition. He attended Santa Rosa Junior College were he achieved a bachelor’s degree. He then attended the University of California at Berkeley where he achieved a master’s degree and Ph.D Garcia studied at the University of California, receiving his Ph.D in 1965. His first postdoctoral j
Early life[]
Education[]
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