Cue duration and trial spacing effects in contingency assessment in the streaming procedure with humans.

According to the cycle/trial (C/T) rule, the rate of associative learning is a function of the ratio between the overall rate of U.S. presentation (C) and its rate in the presence of the conditioned stimulus (CS; [T]). This rule is well supported in studies with nonhumans. The present study was conducted to test whether it also applies to human contingency learning. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed to rapid streams of trials. Sensitivity to the cue-outcome contingency varied with both intertrial interval (ITI, which captures C) and cue duration, but the C/T rule was not respected, notably because the effect of ITI was much larger than the effect of cue duration. Experiment 2 showed that mere suppression of verbal strategies did not alter the magnitude of the ITI effect. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1 but with cue duration and ITI varied between 1,000 and 3,000 ms instead of between 100 and 1,000 ms. Performance was insensitive to both cue duration and ITI. This was not the consequence of Experiment 3 only varying the cue duration to ITI ratio by a factor of 3; in Experiment 4 where the cue duration was 100 ms, a 300-ms ITI was sufficient to observe an ITI effect. The lack of an ITI effect with a 1,000-ms cue and an ITI varying between 1,000 and 3,000 ms was replicated in Experiment 5. These results are discussed in light of how processes underlying associative learning might break down when events occur very rapidly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Associative interference and nonreinforcement in human contingency learning.

This article reports three experiments comparing the impact on contingency assessment of associative cue interference (proactive, interspersed, and retroactive) and nonreinforcement (latent inhibition, partial reinforcement, and extinction). All three experiments used variants of the rapid trial streaming procedure developed by Allan and collaborators. Participants were exposed to stimulus streams and then asked how likely it was for a target cue to be accompanied (Experiment 1) or to be followed (Experiments 2 and 3) by a target outcome. Experiments 1 and 2 looked at interference and found that when the objective target cue-outcome contingency is positive, interspersed interference is more effective than either proactive or retroactive interference. Experiment 2 additionally showed that this conclusion was a function of the target cue-outcome contingency: when the number of cue-outcome pairings was low, retroactive interference was more efficient than interspersed interference. Experiment 3 examined nonreinforcement and found that the efficacies of latent inhibition, partial reinforcement, and extinction are also a function of the target cue-outcome contingency, but the pattern differed greatly from what was observed in Experiment 2. When the number of cue-outcome pairings was high, there was no difference between latent inhibition, partial reinforcement, and extinction. When the number of cue-outcome pairings was low, extinction did not lower the contingency judgement, whereas latent inhibition and partial reinforcement did.

Contiguity and overshadowing interactions in the rapid-streaming procedure.

When multiple cues are associated with the same outcome, organisms tend to select between the cues, with one revealing greater behavioral control at the expense of the others (i.e., cue competition). However, non-human and human studies have not always observed this competition, creating a puzzling scenario in which the interaction between cues can result in competition, no interaction, or facilitation as a function of several learning parameters. In five experiments, we assessed whether temporal contiguity and overshadowing effects are reliably observed in the streamed-trial procedure, and whether there was an interaction between them. We anticipated that weakening temporal contiguity (ranging from 500 to 1,000 ms) should attenuate competition. Using within-subject designs, participants experienced independent series of rapid streams in which they had to learn the relationship between visual cues (presented either alone or with another cue) and an outcome, with the cue-outcome pairings being presented with either a delay or trace relationship. Across experiments, we observed overshadowing (Experiments 1, 2, 4, and 5) and temporal contiguity effects (Experiments 2, 3, and 4). Despite the frequent occurrence of both effects, we did not find that trace conditioning abolished competition between cues. Overall, these results suggest that the extent to which contiguity determines cue interactions depends on multiple variables, some of which we address in the General discussion.

The illusion of pure reason in science: A cautionary note.

Introspection tells people that their behavior is both consciously reasoned and functional (i.e., rational), at least based on the evidence available to them. In contrast, research has found that much human behavior reported to be consciously determined, is strongly influenced by heuristics and the mechanistic principles of associative learning that usually function unconsciously and are sometimes sub-optimal. Scientists are trained to base their conclusions on a rational analysis of evidence, which enhances the scientific validity of their conclusions. But scientific training appears to do little to constrain the role of unconscious heuristics. The present point is that scientists are humans and, as such, they are subject to the influence of heuristics in their scientific conclusions just as laypeople are in their everyday behavior. As an example, the availability heuristic and how it seemingly feeds the repetition-induced truth effect are described. One consequence of this is that failures to replicate frequently cited papers do little to devalue the irreplicable reports. Although unconscious heuristics influence the scientific thinking of researchers, scientists are typically unaware of the role of these heuristics due to their operating below the horizon of introspection. This appears to explain the persistence, in light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, of the views by many researchers that 'a prediction error is necessary for learning' and that 'reactivated memories have to be reconsolidated to be retained for future access.'

Determinants of extinction in a streamed trial procedure.

The strength of an association between a cue and its outcome is influenced by both the probability of the outcome given the cue and the probability of the outcome in the absence of the cue. Once an association has been formed, extinction is the procedure for reducing responding indicative of the association by repeated presentation of the cue without the outcome. The present experiments tested whether cumulative frequency and/or cumulative duration of these events affects associative extinction in a streamed trial extinction procedure with human participants. Experiment 1 assessed the effects of parametric manipulations of the frequency and duration of either the cue by itself or cue-outcome co-absence. In Experiment 1, participants proved relatively insensitive to manipulation of the event's duration. In contrast, judgements of the association by participants decreased when the frequency of cue-alone events was increased, even when the durations of those events were decreased so that cumulative exposure to the cue was equated. No effect of either the duration or the frequency of cue-outcome co-absence was observed. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the effect of cue-alone (i.e., extinction trial) frequency generalises across a wide range of parameters for initial acquisition achieved by cue-outcome pairings. Experiment 3 tested for an interaction between event duration during initial learning and event duration during extinction. Collectively, these results indicate that the cumulative frequency, and not the cumulative duration, of extinction trials as well as the duration of the cue-outcome co-absences between extinction trials control the effectiveness of an extinction procedure.

Signal detection analysis of contingency assessment: Associative interference and nonreinforcement impact cue-outcome contingency sensitivity, whereas cue density affects bias.

In a signal detection theory approach to associative learning, the perceived (i.e., subjective) contingency between a cue and an outcome is a random variable drawn from a Gaussian distribution. At the end of the sequence, participants report a positive cue-outcome contingency provided the subjective contingency is above some threshold. Some researchers have suggested that the mean of the subjective contingency distributions and the threshold are controlled by different variables. The present data provide empirical support for this claim. In three experiments, participants were exposed to rapid streams of trials at the end of which they had to indicate whether a target outcome O1 was more likely following a target cue X. Interfering treatments were incorporated in some streams to impend participants' ability to identify the objective X-O1 contingency: interference trials (X was paired with an irrelevant outcome O2), nonreinforced trials (X was presented alone), plus control trials (an irrelevant cue W was paired with O2). Overall, both interference and nonreinforced trials impaired participants' sensitivity to the contingencies as measured by signal detection theory's d', but they also enhanced detection of positive contingencies through a cue density effect, with nonreinforced trials being more susceptible to this effect than interference trials. These results are explicable if one assumes interference and nonreinforced trials impact the mean of the associative strength distribution, while the cue density influences the threshold. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Testing improves performance as well as assesses learning: A review of the testing effect with implications for models of learning.

Taking a test of previously studied material has been shown to improve long-term subsequent test performance in a large variety of well controlled experiments with both human and nonhuman subjects. This phenomenon is called the testing effect. The promise that this benefit has for the field of education has biased research efforts to focus on applied instances of the testing effect relative to efforts to provide detailed accounts of the effect. Moreover, the phenomenon and its theoretical implications have gone largely unacknowledged in the basic associative learning literature, which historically and currently focuses primarily on the role of information processing at the time of acquisition while ignoring the role of processing at the time of testing. Learning is still widely considered to be something that happens during initial training, prior to testing, and tests are viewed as merely assessments of learning. However, the additional processing that occurs during testing has been shown to be relevant for future performance. The present review offers an introduction to the historical development, application, and modern issues regarding the role of testing as a learning opportunity (i.e., the testing effect). We conclude that the testing effect is seen to be sufficiently robust across tasks and parameters to serve as a compelling challenge for theories of learning to address. Our hope is that this review will inspire new research, particularly with nonhuman subjects, aimed at identifying the basic underlying mechanisms which are engaged during retrieval processes and will fuel new thinking about the learning-performance distinction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Blocking is not 'pure' cue competition: Renewal-like effects in forward and backward blocking indicate contributions by associative cue interference.

Blocking (i.e., reduced responding to cue X following YX-outcome pairings in Phase 2 as a consequence of cue Y having been paired with the outcome in Phase 1) is one of the signature phenomena in Pavlovian conditioning. Its discovery promoted the development of multiple associative models, most of which viewed blocking as an instance of pure cue competition (i.e., a decrease in responding attributable to training two conditioned stimuli in compound). Two experiments are reported in which rats were examined in a fear conditioning paradigm (i.e., lick suppression), and context dependency of retrieval at test was used as an index of associative cue interference (i.e., a decrease in responding to a target cue as a result of training a second cue with the same outcome but without concurrent presentation of the two cues). Specifically, we observed renewal of forward-blocking which parallels renewal of proactive interference, and renewal of backward-blocking which parallels renewal of retroactive interference. Thus, both backward-blocking (Experiment 1, embedded in a sensory preconditioning design) and forward-blocking (Experiment 2, conducted in first-order conditioning) appear to be influenced by retroactive and proactive interference, respectively, as well as cue competition. Consequently, blocking, long regarded as a benchmark example of pure cue competition, is sometimes a hybrid of cue competition and associative interference. Finally, the Discussion considers whether stimulus competition and associative interference are two independent phenomena or products of a single underlying process. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Benefiting from trial spacing without the cost of prolonged training: Frequency, not duration, of trials with absent stimuli enhances perceived contingency.

The statistical relation between two events influences the perception of how one event relates to the presence or absence of another. Interestingly, the simultaneous absence of both events, just like their mutual occurrence, is relevant for describing their contingency. In three experiments, we explored the relevance of coabsent events by varying the duration and frequency of trials without stimuli. We used a rapid trial streaming procedure and found that the perceived association between events is enhanced with increasing frequency of coabsent events, unlike the duration of coabsent events, which had little effect. These findings suggest ways in which the benefits of trial spacing, during which both events are absent, could be obtained without increasing total training time. Centrally, this can be done by frequent repeating of shortened coabsent events, each marked by a trial contextual cue. We discuss four potential accounts of how coabsent experience might be processed contributing to this effect: (a) contingency sensitivity, (b) testing effect, (c) reduced associative interference by the context, and (d) reduced encoding interference. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

More frequent, shorter trials enhance acquisition in a training session: There is a free lunch!

The strength of the learned relation between two events, a model for causal perception, has been found to depend on their overall statistical relation, and might be expected to be related to both training trial frequency and trial duration. We report five experiments using a rapid-trial streaming procedure containing Event 1-Event 2 pairings (A trials), Event 1-alone (B trials), Event 2-alone (C trials), and neither event (D trials), in which trial frequencies and durations were independently varied. Judgements of association increased with increasing frequencies of A trials and decreased with increasing frequencies of both B and C trials but showed little effect of frequency of D trials. Across five experiments, a weak but often significant effect of trial duration was also detected, which was always in the same direction as trial frequency. Thus, both frequency and duration of trials influenced learning, but frequency had decidedly stronger effects. Importantly, the benefit of more trials greatly outweighed the observed reduction in effect size caused by a proportional decrease in trial duration. In experiment 5, more trials of proportionately shorter duration enhanced effects on contingency judgments despite a shortening of the training session. We consider the observed 'frequency advantage' with respect to both frequentist models of learning and models based on information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Mere Exposure Effect Is Sometimes Insensitive to Mood Inductions.

The mere exposure effect (MEE) is defined as repeated exposures to a stimulus enhancing affective evaluations of that stimulus (Zajonc, 1968). The three prominent explanations of the MEE are Zajonc's "neophobia" account, the uncertainty reduction account, and the perceptual fluency approach. Zajonc's "neophobia" account posits that people have an inherent low level of fear of novel objects and exposure to the objects partially extinguishes this novelty-based fear. The uncertainty reduction account asserts that people find uncertainty aversive and habituation reduces uncertainty. The fluency account postulates that people "like" representations of things with which they are fluent. In four experiments, we induced positive and negative moods before or after target exposures. In addition to assessing the MEE in each condition, we assessed the mood induction. The central hypothesis assessed in this series was that there would be an interaction between mood and the MEE. Although the three accounts of the MEE generated divergent predictions, none of the accounts were well supported by the data. Tests for mood induction demonstrated the efficacy of the induction procedures and the MEE was consistently observed, but Bayesian analysis indicated that at least in the present preparation mood had no effect on the MEE.

Failures of memory and the fate of forgotten memories.

This review is intended primarily to provide cognitive benchmarks and perhaps a new mindset for behavioral neuroscientists who study memory. Forgetting, defined here broadly as all types of decreases in acquired responding to stimulus-specific eliciting cues, is commonly attributed to one or more of the following families of mechanisms: (1) (4) associative interference by information similar to, but different from the target information, (2) spontaneous decay of memory with increasing retention intervals, (3) displacement from short-term memory by irrelevant information, and (4) inadequate retrieval cues at test. I briefly review each of these families and discuss data suggesting that many apparent instances of spontaneous forgetting and displacement from short-term memory can be viewed as variants of inadequate retrieval cues and associative interference. The potential for recovery of target information from each of these families of forgetting without further relevant training is then reviewed, with a conclusion that most forgetting is due to retrieval failure as opposed to irreversible erasure of memory. The more general point is made that there are logical problems with ever talking about attenuating or erasing a memory as a consequence of conventional forgetting or disrupted consolidation/reconsolidation. Consideration is then given to the frequently overlooked but highly beneficial consequences of most forgetting. Lastly, the major variables that moderate forgetting are summarized, including (a) the similarities of the target information including training context to the explicit retrieval cues and context present at test, (b) the similarities of potentially interfering acquired information to the retrieval cues and context present at test, and (c) the retention interval for the target information relative to that for the potentially interfering information. Appropriate manipulation of these variables can reduce forgetting, and increase forgetting when desired.

Retroactive interference: Counterconditioning and extinction with and without biologically significant outcomes.

Following cue-outcome (X-O) pairings, 2 procedures that reduce conditioned responses to X are extinction, in which X is presented by itself, and counterconditioning, in which X is paired with a different outcome typically of valence opposite that of training. Although studies with animals have generally found counterconditioning more efficient than extinction in reducing responding, data from humans are less clear. They suggest counterconditioning is more efficient than extinction at interfering with emotional processing, but there is little difference between the two procedures regarding their impact on the verbal assessment of the probability of the outcome given the cue. However, issues of statistical power leave conclusions ambiguous. We compared counterconditioning and extinction in highly powered experiments that exploited a novel procedure. A rapid streamed-trial procedure was used in which participants were asked to rate how likely a target outcome was to accompany a target cue after being exposed to acquisition trials followed by extinction, counterconditioning, or neither. In Experiments 1 and 2, evaluative conditioning was assessed by asking participants to rate the pleasantness of the cues after treatment. These studies found counterconditioning more efficient than extinction at reducing evaluative conditioning but less efficient at decreasing the assessment of the conditional probability of the outcome given the cue. The latter effect was replicated with neutral outcomes in Experiments 3 and 4, but the effect was inverted in Experiment 4 in conditions designed to preclude reinstatement of initial training by the question probing the conditional probability of the outcome given the cue. Effect sizes were small (Cohen's d of 0.2 for effect on evaluative conditioning, Cohen's d of 0.3 for effect on the outcome expectancy). If representative, this poses a serious constraint in terms of statistical power for further investigations of differential efficiency of extinction and counterconditioning in humans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects on Memory of Early Testing and Accuracy Assessment for Central and Contextual Content.

Memory for an event is influenced by many factors including retention interval, frequency of assessment, and type of information assessed concerning the event. We examined the usefulness of observer memory for contextual information in assessing accuracy of memory for central information. Participants viewed a video of a purse being stolen and were asked questions concerning the perpetrator and surrounding context of the event, including where and when the event occurred and who else was present. Participants tested immediately after seeing the video exhibited better memory than those tested for the first time 48-hour after the event. Additionally, testing immediately after viewing the video reduced forgetting over the 48-hour delay (i.e., early testing attenuated subsequent forgetting). Moreover, memory for the context of the event correlated positively with memory of the central information (i.e., perpetrator), and memory concerning other people at the event tended to have the highest correlation with perpetrator memory.

Visual Gender Cues Guide Crossmodal Selective Attending to a Gender-Congruent Voice During Dichotic Listening.

Visual input of a face appears to influence the ability to selectively attend to one voice over another simultaneous voice. We examined this crossmodal effect, specifically the role face gender may have on selective attention to male and female gendered simultaneous voices. Using a within-subjects design, participants were presented with a dynamic male face, female face, or fixation cross, with each condition being paired with a dichotomous audio stream of male and female voices reciting different lists of concrete nouns. In Experiment 1a, the female voice was played in the right ear and the male voice in the left ear. In Experiment 1b, both voices were played in both ears with differences in volume mimicking the interaural intensity difference between disparately localized voices in naturalistic situations. Free recall of words spoken by the two voices immediately following stimulus presentation served as a proxy measure of attention. In both sections of the experiment, crossmodal congruity of face gender enhanced same-gender word recall. This effect indicates that crossmodal interaction between voices and faces guides auditory attention. The results contribute to our understanding of how humans navigate the crossmodal relationship between voices and faces to direct attention in social interactions such as those in the cocktail party scenario.

Extinction training can make the extinction context a stimulus-specific inhibitor: A potential mechanism of experimental renewal.

Renewal is the recovery of extinguished responding to a conditioned stimulus when testing occurs outside the extinction context. Renewal has been explained as the extinction context becoming a negative occasion setter during extinction. However, other mechanisms may contribute. Two recent studies showed (a) after extinction of a discrete cue, the extinction context can serve as a conditioned inhibitor, and (b) in some circumstances operational extinction of a conditioned inhibitor can reduce inhibition with respect to a transfer excitor while retaining inhibition with respect to the excitor used in inhibitory training. Here we examine the potential contribution of these phenomena to renewal. In the present experiment, all rats received fear-conditioning with a target cue in one context and extinction of that cue in a second context. Then half of the subjects received massive extinction of the extinction context (i.e., 24 h) while the other half received only handling. Finally, some subjects in each condition were tested for responding to the target cue in the extinction context, others in a second familiar context, and yet others in a third transfer context in which another fear cue had been extinguished. The results showed ABC renewal independent of whether subjects had or had not received context extinction. However, transfer of the inhibitory potential of the extinction context was observed only in subjects that did not receive context extinction. These results suggest an extinction context can serve as a stimulus-specific conditioned inhibitor, thereby contributing to renewal by decreasing responding to the target cue in an ABB control condition.

Adaptive Memory: Generality of the Parent Processing Effect and Effects of Biological Relatedness on Recall.

The adaptive memory framework posits that human memory is an evolved cognitive feature, in which stimuli relevant to fitness are better remembered than neutral stimuli. There is now substantial evidence that processing a neutral stimulus in terms of its relevancy to an imagined ancestral survival scenario enhances recall, although there is still disagreement concerning the proximate mechanisms responsible for this effect. Several other mnemonic biases have recently been discovered that similarly appear to reflect evolutionary pressures, including a bias to remember items relevant to an imagined parenting scenario. We tested the generality of this parent processing effect by varying the biological relatedness of the imagined child. We also varied the biological relatedness of a child during an imagined third-person survival processing scenario. Across four experiments, we found evidence that simply altering the described biological relatedness of a child in the parenting scenario and third-person survival processing scenario can affect recall, such that items are better remembered when made relevant to a biological child compared to an adopted child. How these findings inform the general adaptive memory framework is discussed.

Extinction of a Pavlovian-conditioned inhibitor leads to stimulus-specific inhibition.

Conditioned inhibitors have been shown to be largely unaffected by non-reinforced exposure (i.e., extinction treatment). Although excitatory associations are readily diminished by extinction treatment, so-called inhibitory associations appear to be largely immune to them. In two fear-conditioning experiments with rats, it was found that a decrease in inhibitory control can result from a massive number of extinction exposures to the inhibitor. Experiment 1 provided evidence that extinction treatment attenuated negative summation between the potential inhibitor and a transfer excitor. However, the extinction treatment had no influence on responding to the original training compound, indicating that some stimulus-specific inhibitory potential remained even after massive extinction. Experiment 2 indicated that retarded excitatory acquisition to the inhibitory stimulus observed after extinction treatment of the inhibitor is no greater than that following a similar amount of stimulus pre-exposure without prior inhibition training (i.e., latent inhibition). The findings indicate that inhibitory associations can be extinguished with large numbers of extinction trials, but they appear to be much more resistant to extinction than excitatory associations.

Associative structure of conditioned inhibition produced by inhibitory perceptual learning treatment.

Exposure to a set of complex stimuli yields an enhanced ability to discriminate between these stimuli. In previous experimental studies, two distinguishable stimuli, X and A, were each repeatedly paired with a common Stimulus B to create compound Stimuli XB and AB. Prior evidence suggests that unique Features X and A form mutually inhibitory associations. This was evidenced by pairing Feature A with a biologically relevant stimulus (i.e., an unconditioned stimulus [US]) and observing that Stimulus X alone later serves to inhibit anticipatory behaviors for that US. These observations may reflect the mutually inhibitory nature of the two Features X and A. However, by assessing the influence of X on behavior that anticipates the US rather than Feature A, these experiments tested inhibition only indirectly. In the present experiments, a more direct measure of inhibition is proposed and tested with rats. We found evidence of retardation and negative summation of associations between unique Features X and A in their capacity to serve as competing cues during overshadowing treatments. Stimulus X was less susceptible to overshadowing by A (which is indicative of retardation of the establishment of an X-A within-compound association) and was able to suppress overshadowing by A of another stimulus (Y) when X was presented with Y at test (which is indicative of negative summation of the representation of A by X). Thus, XB/AB trials were seen to establish an inhibitory relationship between X and A.

Excitatory second-order conditioning using a backward first-order conditioned stimulus: A challenge for prediction error reduction.

Prével and colleagues reported excitatory learning with a backward conditioned stimulus (CS) in a conditioned reinforcement preparation. Their results add to existing evidence of backward CSs sometimes being excitatory and were viewed as challenging the view that learning is driven by prediction error reduction, which assumes that only predictive (i.e., forward) relationships are learned. The results instead were consistent with the assumptions of both Miller's Temporal Coding Hypothesis and Wagner's Sometimes Opponent Processes (SOP) model. The present experiment extended the conditioned reinforcement preparation developed by Prével et al. to a backward second-order conditioning preparation, with the aim of discriminating between these two accounts. We tested whether a second-order CS can serve as an effective conditioned reinforcer, even when the first-order CS with which it was paired is a backward CS that elicits no responding. Evidence of conditioned reinforcement was found, despite no conditioned response (CR) being elicited by the first-order backward CS. The evidence of second-order conditioning in the absence of excitatory conditioning to the first-order CS is interpreted as a challenge to SOP. In contrast, the present results are consistent with the Temporal Coding Hypothesis and constitute a conceptual replication in humans of previous reports of excitatory second-order conditioning in rodents with a backward CS. The proposal is made that learning is driven by "discrepancy" with prior experience as opposed to " prediction error."