Unidirectional rating scales overestimate the illusory causation phenomenon.

Illusory causation is a phenomenon in which people mistakenly perceive a causal relationship between a cue and outcome even though the contingency between them is actually zero. Illusory causation studies typically use a unidirectional causal rating scale, where one endpoint refers to no relationship and the other to a strongly positive causal relationship. This procedure may bias mean causal ratings in a positive direction, either by censoring negative ratings or by discouraging participants from giving the normative rating of zero which is at the bottom extreme of the scale. To test this possibility, we ran two experiments that directly compared the magnitude of causal illusions when assessed with a unidirectional (zero-positive) versus a bidirectional (negative-zero-positive) rating scale. Experiment 1 used high cue and outcome densities (both 75%), whereas Experiment 2 used neutral cue and outcome densities (both 50%). Across both experiments, we observed a larger illusory causation effect in the unidirectional group compared with the bidirectional group, despite both groups experiencing the same training trials. The causal illusions in Experiment 2 were observed despite participants accurately learning the conditional probabilities of the outcome occurring in both the presence and absence of the cue, suggesting that the illusion is driven by the inability to accurately integrate conditional probabilities to infer causal relationships. Our results indicate that although illusory causation is a genuine phenomenon that is observable with either a undirectional or a bidirectional rating scale, its magnitude may be overestimated when unidirectional rating scales are used.

Using unobserved causes to explain unexpected outcomes: The effect of existing causal knowledge on protection from extinction by a hidden cause.

People often rely on the covariation between events to infer causality. However, covariation between cues and outcomes may change over time. In the associative learning literature, extinction provides a model to study updating of causal beliefs when a previously established relationship no longer holds. Prediction error theories can explain both extinction and protection from extinction when an inhibitory (preventive) cue is present during extinction. In three experiments using the allergist causal learning task, we found that protection could also be achieved by a hidden cause that was inferred but not physically present, so long as that cause was a plausible preventer of the outcome. We additionally showed complete protection by a physically presented cue that was neutral rather than inhibitory at the outset of extinction. Both findings are difficult to reconcile with dominant prediction error theories. However, they are compatible with the idea of theory protection, where the learner attributes the absence of the outcome to the added cue (when present) or to a hidden cause, and therefore does not need to revise causal beliefs about A. Our results suggest that prediction error encourages changes in causal beliefs, but the nature of the change is determined by reasoning processes that incorporate existing knowledge of causal mechanisms and may be biased toward preservation of existing beliefs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A cognitive pathway to punishment insensitivity.

Individuals differ in their sensitivity to the adverse consequences of their actions, leading some to persist in maladaptive behaviors. Two pathways have been identified for this insensitivity: a motivational pathway based on excessive reward valuation and a behavioral pathway based on autonomous stimulus-response mechanisms. Here, we identify a third, cognitive pathway based on differences in punishment knowledge and use of that knowledge to suppress behavior. We show that distinct phenotypes of punishment sensitivity emerge from differences in what people learn about their actions. Exposed to identical punishment contingencies, some people (sensitive phenotype) form correct causal beliefs that they use to guide their behavior, successfully obtaining rewards and avoiding punishment, whereas others form incorrect but internally coherent causal beliefs that lead them to earn punishment they do not like. Incorrect causal beliefs were not inherently problematic because we show that many individuals benefit from information about why they are being punished, revaluing their actions and changing their behavior to avoid further punishment (unaware phenotype). However, one condition where incorrect causal beliefs were problematic was when punishment is infrequent. Under this condition, more individuals show punishment insensitivity and detrimental patterns of behavior that resist experience and information-driven updating, even when punishment is severe (compulsive phenotype). For these individuals, rare punishment acted as a "trap," inoculating maladaptive behavioral preferences against cognitive and behavioral updating.

Retardation of acquisition after conditioned inhibition and latent inhibition training in human causal learning.

Inhibitory stimuli are slow to acquire excitatory properties when paired with the outcome in a retardation test. However, this pattern is also seen after simple nonreinforced exposure: latent inhibition. It is commonly assumed that retardation would be stronger for a conditioned inhibitor than for a latent inhibitor, but there is surprisingly little empirical evidence comparing the two in either animals or humans. Thus, retardation after inhibitory training could in principle be attributable entirely to latent inhibition. We directly compared the speed of excitatory acquisition after conditioned inhibition and matched latent inhibition training in human causal learning. Conditioned inhibition training produced stronger transfer in a summation test, but the two conditions did not differ substantially in a retardation test. We offer two explanations for this dissociation. One is that learned predictiveness attenuated the latent inhibition that otherwise would have occurred during conditioned inhibition training, so that retardation in that condition was primarily due to inhibition. The second explanation is that inhibitory learning in these experiments was hierarchical in nature, similar to negative occasion-setting. By this account, the conditioned inhibitor was able to negatively modulate the test excitor in a summation test, but was no more retarded than a latent inhibitor in its ability to form a direct association with the outcome. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Inhibitory Learning with Bidirectional Outcomes: Prevention Learning or Causal Learning in the Opposite Direction?

Influential models of causal learning assume that learning about generative and preventive relationships are symmetrical to each other. That is, a preventive cue directly prevents an outcome from occurring (i.e., "direct" prevention) in the same way a generative cue directly causes an outcome to occur. However, previous studies from our lab have shown that many participants do not infer a direct prevention causal structure after feature-negative discrimination (A+/AB-) with a unidirectional outcome (Lee & Lovibond, 2021). Melchers et al. (2006) suggested that the use of a bidirectional outcome that can either increase or decrease from baseline, encourages direct prevention learning. Here we test an alternative possibility that a bidirectional outcome encourages encoding of a generative relationship in the opposite direction, where B directly causes a decrease in the outcome. Thus, previous evidence of direct prevention learning using bidirectional outcomes may instead be explained by some participants inferring an "Opposite Causal" structure. In two experiments, participants did indeed report an opposite causal structure. In Experiment 1, these participants showed the lowest outcome predictions when B was combined with a novel cause in a summation test, and lowest outcome predictions when B was presented alone. In Experiment 2, B successfully blocked learning to a novel cue that was directly paired with a reduction in the outcome, and this effect was strongest among participants who endorsed an Opposite Causal structure. We conclude that previous evidence of direct prevention learning using bidirectional outcomes may be a product of excitatory rather than inhibitory learning.

Pilot Mental Health, Methodologies, and Findings: A Systematic Review.

INTRODUCTION: Pilots' mental health has received increased attention following Germanwings Flight 9525 in 2015, where the copilot intentionally crashed the aircraft into the French Alps, killing all on board. An investigation of this incident found that the pilot had a depressive disorder.METHODS: This systematic review investigated peer reviewed studies of pilot mental health published since 1980. A total of 58 papers were identified.RESULTS: Two main methodologies have been employed: questionnaires and database record searches. Anxiety, depression, and suicide were the most commonly investigated mental health conditions. There were almost an equal number of studies that found a higher prevalence of psychological symptoms in pilots as those that found a lower prevalence, relative to controls or the general population. Prevalence rates were higher in studies relying solely on questionnaires than in studies employing database record searches.DISCUSSION: Prevalence estimates are closely associated with methodology, so it is difficult to determine the true rate. Factors that might account for low prevalence estimates include under-reporting of symptoms by pilots and a reluctance to diagnose on the part of health professionals. Factors that might account for high prevalence estimates include anonymous assessment, the use of questionnaires that do not align with clinical disorders, and inconsistent cut-off scores. It is recommended that future studies on prevalence use well-validated clinical measures, and that more research be conducted on the effects of particular disorders on job performance.Ackland CA, Molesworth BRC, Grisham JR, Lovibond PF. Pilot mental health, methodologies, and findings: a systematic review. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2022; 93(9): 696-708.

Generalization following symmetrical intradimensional discrimination training.

A challenge for generalization models is to specify how excitation generated from a CS+ (i.e., positive evidence) should interact with inhibition from a CS- (i.e., negative evidence) to produce generalized responding. Empirically, many generalization phenomena are consistent with the monotonicity principle, which states that additional positive evidence should increase generalized responding, whereas additional negative evidence should decrease responding. However, a recent study (Lee et al.,, 2019) demonstrated that additional negative evidence can sometimes increase generalization, in direct contrast to animal data and associative accounts of generalization. The current study investigated whether a similar effect could be found in a symmetrical intradimensional discrimination procedure with two sources of negative evidence (CS-s) located on each side of a CS+. In three experiments, we compared generalization along a green-blue dimension between one group of participants who learned that an aqua-colored shape (CS+) predicted an outcome (Single Positive group) with another group who also learned that both a slightly greener and a slightly bluer shape led to no outcome (Double Negative group). Experiments 1A and 1B showed no effect of the additional negative evidence in increasing generalization around the CS+. However, changing a stimulus feature at test (shape) resulted in a higher gradient peak in the Double Negative group relative to the Single Positive group in Experiment 2. Although this result violates the monotonicity principle, an extended version of Blough's (1975) model applying cue competition to multiple stimulus dimensions (i.e., shape and color) successfully replicated the group differences. Our results suggest that associative mechanisms can account for some instances in which negative evidence increases generalization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Reversal of inhibition by no-modulation training but not by extinction in human causal learning.

One of the many strengths of the Rescorla and Wagner (1972) model is that it accounts for both excitatory and inhibitory learning using a single error-correction mechanism. However, it makes the counterintuitive prediction that nonreinforced presentations of an inhibitory stimulus will lead to extinction of its inhibitory properties. Zimmer-Hart and Rescorla (1974) provided the first of several animal conditioning studies that contradicted this prediction. However, the human data are more mixed. Accordingly, we set out to test whether extinction of an inhibitor occurs in human causal learning after simultaneous feature negative training with a conventional unidirectional outcome. In 2 experiments with substantial sample sizes, we found no evidence of extinction after presentations of the inhibitory stimulus alone in either a summation test or causal ratings. By contrast, 2 "no-modulation" procedures that contradicted the original training contingencies successfully reversed inhibition. These results did not differ substantially as a function of participants' self-reported causal structures (configural/modulation/prevention). We hypothesize that inhibitory learning may be intrinsically modulatory, analogous to negative occasion-setting, even with simultaneous training. This hypothesis would explain why inhibition is reversed by manipulations that contradict modulation but not by simple extinction, as well as other properties of inhibitory learning such as imperfect transfer to another excitor. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Inhibitory summation as a form of generalization.

Inhibitory learning after feature negative training (A+/AB-) is typically measured by combining the Feature B with a separately trained excitor (e.g., C) in a summation test. Reduced responding to C is taken as evidence that B has properties directly opposite to those of C. However, in human causal learning, transfer of B's inhibitory properties to another excitor is modest and depends on individual differences in inferred causal structure. Here we ask whether instead of opposing processes, a summation test might instead be thought of in terms of generalization. Using an allergist task, we tested whether inhibitory transfer would be influenced by similarity. We found that transfer was greater when the test stimuli were from the same semantic category as the training stimuli (Experiments 1 and 2) and when the test excitor had previously been associated with the same outcome (Experiment 3). We also found that the similarity effect applied across all self-reported causal structures. We conclude it may be more helpful to consider transfer of inhibition as a form of conceptual generalization rather than the arithmetic summation of opposing processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Development and Psychometric Properties of the DASS-Youth (DASS-Y): An Extension of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) to Adolescents and Children.

The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS; Lovibond and Lovibond, 1995b) is a set of psychometrically sound scales that is widely used to assess negative emotional states in adults. In this project, we developed the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales for Youth (DASS-Y) and tested its psychometric properties. Data were collected from 2,121 Australian children and adolescents aged 7-18 (61% female). This sample was split randomly into a calibration group (n = 1075, 61% female) and a cross-validation group (n = 1046, 60% female). First, we used Confirmatory Factor Analysis on the calibration group to test the 3-factor DASS model on 40 items we had developed in previous exploratory studies. We then selected the best-performing 21 items based on both statistical and theoretical considerations, guided by the structure and item content of the adult DASS. We cross-validated this new 21-item model in the second half of the sample. Results indicated good fit for the final 21-item 3-factor DASS model in both groups of children and adolescents. Multiple regression analyses showed that when scores on the other DASS-Y scales were held constant, the DASS-Y Depression scale had a strong negative relationship with positive affect and life satisfaction, the DASS-Y Anxiety scale was strongly associated with physiological hyperarousal, and the DASS-Y Stress scale was associated with excessive worrying. However, the relationship between Stress and worrying was only evident from age 10 onwards. Our results show that the core symptoms that define depression, anxiety and stress in children and adolescents are similar to those previously found in adults. The DASS-Y is a public domain instrument that we hope will prove useful in both research and clinical contexts.

Nonreactive testing: Evaluating the effect of withholding feedback in predictive learning.

Learning of cue-outcome relationships in associative learning experiments is often assessed by presenting cues without feedback about the outcome and informing participants to expect no outcomes to occur. The rationale is that this "no-feedback" testing procedure prevents new learning during testing that might contaminate the later test trials. We tested this assumption in 4 predictive learning experiments where participants were tasked with learning which foods (cues) were causing allergic reactions (the outcome) in a fictitious patient. We found that withholding feedback in a block of trials had no effect on causal ratings (Experiments 1 and 2), but it led to regression toward intermediate ratings when the missing feedback was embedded in the causal scenario and information about the outcome replaced by a "?" (Experiment 3). A factorial experiment manipulating cover story and feedback revealed that the regression-to-baseline effect was primarily driven by presentation of the "?" feedback (Experiment 4). We conclude that the procedure of testing without feedback, used widely in studies of human cognition, is an appropriate way of assessing learning, as long as the missing data are attributed to the experimenter and the absence of feedback is not highlighted in a way that induces uncertainty. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Punishment insensitivity in humans is due to failures in instrumental contingency learning.

Punishment maximises the probability of our individual survival by reducing behaviours that cause us harm, and also sustains trust and fairness in groups essential for social cohesion. However, some individuals are more sensitive to punishment than others and these differences in punishment sensitivity have been linked to a variety of decision-making deficits and psychopathologies. The mechanisms for why individuals differ in punishment sensitivity are poorly understood, although recent studies of conditioned punishment in rodents highlight a key role for punishment contingency detection (Jean-Richard-Dit-Bressel et al., 2019). Here, we applied a novel 'Planets and Pirates' conditioned punishment task in humans, allowing us to identify the mechanisms for why individuals differ in their sensitivity to punishment. We show that punishment sensitivity is bimodally distributed in a large sample of normal participants. Sensitive and insensitive individuals equally liked reward and showed similar rates of reward-seeking. They also equally disliked punishment and did not differ in their valuation of cues that signalled punishment. However, sensitive and insensitive individuals differed profoundly in their capacity to detect and learn volitional control over aversive outcomes. Punishment insensitive individuals did not learn the instrumental contingencies, so they could not withhold behaviour that caused punishment and could not generate appropriately selective behaviours to prevent impending punishment. These differences in punishment sensitivity could not be explained by individual differences in behavioural inhibition, impulsivity, or anxiety. This bimodal punishment sensitivity and these deficits in instrumental contingency learning are identical to those dictating punishment sensitivity in non-human animals, suggesting that they are general properties of aversive learning and decision-making.

Inhibitory causal structures in serial and simultaneous feature negative learning.

We have previously reported that human participants trained with a simultaneous feature negative discrimination (intermixed A+/AB- trials) show only modest transfer of inhibitory properties of feature B to a separately trained excitor in a summation test. Their self-reported causal structure suggested that many participants learned that the effect of feature B was somewhat specific to the excitor it had been trained with (modulation), rather than learning that the feature prevented the outcome (prevention). This pattern is reminiscent of the distinction between negative occasion-setting and conditioned inhibition in the animal conditioning literature. However, in animals, occasion-setting is more commonly seen with a serial procedure, in which the feature (B) precedes the training excitor (A). Accordingly, we ran three experiments to compare serial with simultaneous training in an allergist causal judgement task. Transfer in a summation test was stronger to a previously modulated test excitor compared to a simple excitor after both simultaneous and serial training. There was a numerical trend towards a larger effect in the serial group, but it failed to reach significance and the Bayes Factor indicated support for the null. Serial training had no differential effect on the self-reported causal structure and did not significantly reduce overall transfer. After both simultaneous and serial training, transfer was strongest in participants who reported a prevention structure, replicating and extending our previous results to a previously modulated excitor. These results suggest that serial feature negative training does not promote a qualitatively different inhibitory causal structure compared to simultaneous training in humans.

Breakfast or bakery? The role of categorical ambiguity in overgeneralization of learned fear in trait anxiety.

Pavlovian conditioning studies have shown that humans can generalize conditioned fear to novel stimuli that are categorically related to the threat cue, despite perceptual dissimilarities. The current work examined the role of trait anxiety in the generalization of fear to categorically related objects. Items from 1 category, breakfast or bakery, were paired with shock whereas items from the other category were not. Participants were then tested on ambiguous cross-classified items-those that fitted in both the threat and safe categories. No trait anxiety effect was found in generalization to novel stimuli that clearly belonged to either the threat or the safe category in either shock expectancy ratings or skin conductance. In contrast, trait anxious individuals showed a bias toward higher threat appraisal to the ambiguous cross-classified stimuli. However, this pattern was not due to trait anxious individuals being more likely to perceive ambiguous items as belonging to the threat category. Instead they appear to display a bias toward overestimation of threat when the threat level is ambiguous. The current findings indicate that threat ambiguity modulates the effect of trait anxiety on categorical fear generalization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Individual differences in causal structures inferred during feature negative learning.

Traditional associative learning theories predict that training with feature negative (A+/AB-) contingencies leads to the feature B acquiring negative associative strength and becoming a conditioned inhibitor (i.e., prevention learning). However, feature negative training can sometimes result in negative occasion setting, where B modulates the effect of A. Other studies suggest that participants learn about configurations of cues rather than their individual elements. In this study, we administered simultaneous feature negative training to participants in an allergist causal learning task and tested whether evidence for these three types of learning (prevention, modulation, configural) could be captured via self-report in the absence of any procedural manipulation. Across two experiments, we show that only a small subset of participants endorse the prevention option, suggesting that traditional associative models that predict conditioned inhibition do not completely capture how humans learn about negative contingencies. We also show that the degree of transfer in a summation test corresponds to the implied causal structure underlying conditioned inhibition, occasion-setting, and configural learning, and that participants are only partially sensitive to explicit hints about causal structure. We conclude that feature negative training is an ambiguous causal scenario that reveals individual differences in the representation of inhibitory associations, potentially explaining the modest group-level inhibitory effects often found in humans.

Threat appraisal and negative affect under ambiguity in generalised anxiety disorder.

Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is one of the most common anxiety disorders, yet its mechanisms remain poorly understood. In the current study, we assessed threat processing and negative affect under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity in a sample of treatment-seeking individuals with GAD (n = 34) and in community controls (n = 34). Participants completed a laboratory aversive learning task based on that used by Grupe and Nitschke (2011). A bias in threat expectancy was observed in GAD participants relative to controls for an ambiguous cue that had not been mentioned in the instructions. GAD participants also overestimated the number of times this ambiguous cue had been followed by an aversive outcome, relative to an instructed uncertain cue (50 %). This covariation bias was not observed in controls. GAD participants also reported significantly stronger negative affect towards the ambiguous cue than the uncertain cue, a pattern that was not observed in controls, although the group interaction did not reach significance. These results provide preliminary evidence that ambiguity - rather than uncertainty per se - may be a particularly powerful trigger for biased threat appraisal and negative affect in GAD.

Stimulus discriminability and induction as independent components of generalization.

Generalization of learning can arise from 2 distinct sources: failure to discriminate a novel test stimulus from the trained stimulus and active extrapolation from the trained stimulus to the test stimulus despite them being discriminable. We investigated these 2 processes in a predictive learning task by testing stimulus discriminability (identification of the trained stimulus) as well as generalization of learning (outcome expectancy). Generalization gradients were broader for expectancy than for identification, in both single cue and differential (discrimination) designs, implying a substantial extrapolation component for the most dissimilar stimuli. The shapes of the expectancy gradients were strongly determined by the training design (single cue vs. differential) and by the rules inferred by participants (similarity vs. linear). By contrast, the identification gradients were unaffected by the training design or inferred rules and were equivalent for predictive and nonpredictive stimuli. These results indicate that perceptual discriminability plays a substantial role in generalization, but it is largely unaffected by associative learning. Instead, learning appears to impact on generalization via an independent extrapolation component which involves cognitive processes such as inductive reasoning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Self-efficacy moderates the relationship between avoidance intentions and anxiety.

Future-directed intentions elicit emotional changes that may affect behavioral performance. We have previously shown that avoidance intentions can elicit a reduction in anxiety (Ng & Lovibond, 2017). In the present experiment, we manipulated within-participant self-efficacy for an avoidance behavior to determine whether self-efficacy moderates the relationship between avoidance intentions and anxiety. Anxiety was indexed through skin conductance response and self-report. Participants learned that certain stimuli signaled an aversive electric shock, which they could avoid by performing an easy task or a hard task. Participants had relatively high self-efficacy for the easy task and low self-efficacy for the hard task. Results indicated that on trials when participants intended to avoid the shock, they experienced significantly greater reductions in anxiety when they had to perform the easy task compared with the hard task. We conclude that self-efficacy for avoidance behavior moderates the relationship between avoidance intentions and anxiety. In situations in which avoiding a harmful outcome is an adaptive response, it may be important to increase self-efficacy for avoidance behaviors from the intention-formation stage itself. If that occurs, the reinforcing reductions in anxiety may reaffirm the intention and increase its temporal stability, thereby increasing the likelihood of behavioral performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Generalization of extinction of a generalization stimulus in fear learning.

Two experiments examined whether extinction of a generalization stimulus (GS) after single cue fear conditioning would in turn generalize to other stimuli, relative to a control group that received regular extinction of CS + itself. We found only a weak effect of such "generalization of GS extinction" either back to CS + or to a different GS, on either US expectancy or skin conductance measures. In other words, despite extinction trials with a stimulus highly similar to CS+, participants showed a return of fear when tested with CS + or a novel GS. However this responding declined rapidly over non-reinforced test trials. Trait anxious participants showed higher overall US expectancy ratings in the extinction and test phases, and slower extinction of expectancy, relative to low anxious participants. These results may help explain why exposure therapy, which is unlikely to reproduce the exact stimuli present at acquisition, sometimes fails to transfer to other fear-eliciting stimuli subsequently encountered by anxious clients. The generalization of GS extinction paradigm might provide a useful testbed for evaluation of interventions designed to enhance transfer, such as exposure to multiple diverse exemplars.

Evidential diversity increases generalisation in predictive learning.

In property induction tasks, encountering a diverse range of instances (e.g., hippos and hamsters) with a given property usually increases our willingness to generalise that property to a novel instance, relative to non-diverse evidence (e.g., hippos and rhinos). Although generalisation in property induction and predictive learning tasks share conceptual similarities, it is unknown whether this diversity principle applies to generalisation of a predictive association. We tested this hypothesis in two predictive learning experiments using differential training where one category of stimuli (e.g., fruits) predicted an outcome and another category (e.g., vegetables) predicted no outcome. We compared generalisation between a Non-Diverse group who were presented with non-diverse evidence in both positive (predicted the outcome) and negative (predicted no outcome) categories, and two groups who received the same training as the Non-Diverse group but with a more diverse range of exemplars in the positive (Diverse+ group) or negative (Diverse- group) category. Diversity effects were found for both positive and negative categories, in that learning about a diverse range of exemplars increased generalisation of a predictive association to novel exemplars from that same category. The results suggest that diversity, a key principle describing how we reason inductively, also applies to generalisation in associative learning tasks.