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Andrew R. Delamater is a scientist whose research interests are primarily focused on the study of basic learning processes, especially Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning with laboratory animals. His focus is to understand how organisms mentally and neurologically interpret their environment’s cause-and-effect relationships. Delamater is currently the editor of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition. He currently works at the Department of Psychology, City University of New York—Brooklyn College.

Biography
Delamater received his phD in experimental psychology from Dalhousie University in 1989 with a specialization in associative learning. Afterwards, he conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania where he studied Pavlovian extinction, contingency degradation effects, and multi-layer connectionist network models of associative learning.

Delamater completed post-doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania from 1991-1994. Delamater then came to Brooklyn College as an assistant professor of psychology in 1994. He became associate professor in 2000 and full professor in 2008. He served as an associate editor for the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2005–2017), and edited special issues and special sections for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Outside of scholarly work Delamater is an associate editor for Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition (2019-2025). Delamater is a faculty member in the CUNY Neuroscience Collaborative and has been the president of the Eastern Psychological Association and Pavlovian Society.

Research
Delamater’s research investigates psychological and neural mechanisms involved in simple forms of associative learning, especially Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning. His studies center around the simple forms of learning and decision-making, mostly with laboratory rodents. His aim is to decipher how a rat learns to represent different aspects of reward (what it is, when it occurs, its value) and how that influences their behavior. Delamater’s work has a significant impact on the understanding of how learning and habit formation occur.

Delamater tests out his theories on associative learning and Pavlovian extinction, or the process by which conditioned behaviors disappear. He trained rats to link certain signals with treats, like M&Ms or alcohol. He and his students conduct experiments with rodents, which he breeds himself, in his James Hall Laboratory. Over time, the rats learned that these signals meant a treat was coming, demonstrating associative learning. Delamater is particularly interested in what happens when these associations are broken, also known as extinction. This is where conditioned behaviors, once established, can be ‘unlearned’ or made to disappear. In this experiment, the rats, initially conditioned to consume alcohol, eventually stop due to forced deprivation. This shows how habits can be unlearned, which is important for understanding things like addiction in humans. This study reveals how the animal brain reacts to stimuli and how certain triggers can cause cravings. This research has many practical applications, for example, helping to combat drug addictions in humans.

Representative publications

 * Delamater, A.R.  (2012).  On the nature of CS and US representations in Pavlovian learning.  Learning & Behavior, 40, 1-23. PMID: 21786019


 * Delamater, A.R. (2012).  Issues in the extinction of specific stimulus-outcome associations in Pavlovian conditioning. Behavioural Processes, 90, 9-19.


 * Scarlet, J., Delamater, A.R., Campese, V, Fein, M., & Wheeler, D.S. (2012). Differential involvement of the basolateral amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex in the formation of sensory-specific associations in conditioned flavor preference and magazine approach paradigms.  European Journal of Neuroscience, 35, 1799-1809


 * Delamater, A.R. (2011).  At the interface of learning and cognition:  An associative learning perspective. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 24, 389-411.


 * Nadler, N., Delgado, M., & Delamater, A.R.  (2011).  Pavlovian to instrumental transfer of control in a human learning task.  Emotion, 11, 1112-1123.  PMID: 21534664


 * Delamater, A.R. (2011).  Partial reinforcement and latent inhibition effects on stimulus-outcome associations in flavor preference conditioning.  Learning & Behavior, 39, 259-270.