The consequences of atheoretical, task-driven experimentation: theoretical comment on Paban, Chambon, Jaffard, and Alescio-Lautier (2005).
V. Paban, C. Chambon, M. Jaffard, and B. Alescio-Lautier (2005) concluded that their evidence "demonstrates the independence of aging and cholinergic lesion effects" and stated that "this was quite unexpected" (p. 943). This commentary suggests that the authors' negative findings were predictable, resulting from a focus on behavioral tests and functions unrelated to present evidence and theory concerning the cognitive functions of forebrain cholinergic systems. The article by V. Paban et al. serves as a useful illustration for the importance of theory- and hypothesis-driven assessment of behavioral functions, and for the unproductive consequences of experiments treating behavioral tests as assays used merely for the generation of behavioral correlates.