Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

An analysis of reinstatement after extinction of a conditioned taste aversion.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(2), Apr 2024, 144-160; doi:10.1037/xan0000378Taste aversion learning has sometimes been considered a specialized form of learning. In several other conditioning preparations, after a conditioned stimulus (CS) is conditioned and extinguished, reexposure to the unconditioned stimulus (US) by itself can reinstate the extinguished conditioned response. Reinstatement has been widely studied in fear and appetitive Pavlovian conditioning, as well as operant conditioning, but its status in taste aversion learning is more controversial. Six taste-aversion exp...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 8, 2024 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Cue duration and trial spacing effects in contingency assessment in the streaming procedure with humans.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(2), Apr 2024, 99-117; doi:10.1037/xan0000376According 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 i...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 8, 2024 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

The role of uncertainty in regulating associative change.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(2), Apr 2024, 77-98; doi:10.1037/xan0000375Rescorla (2000, 2001) interpreted his compound test results to show that both common and individual error terms regulate associative change such that the element of a conditioned compound with the greater prediction error undergoes greater associative change than the one with the smaller prediction error. However, it has recently been suggested that uncertainty, not prediction error, is the primary determinant of associative change in people (Spicer et al., 2020, 2022). The current experiments use the compou...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 8, 2024 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

The effect of four different object properties on latency to approach in Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana).
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(2), Apr 2024, 131-143; doi:10.1037/xan0000373Neophobia and neophilia can be lifesaving as they can facilitate foraging while avoiding predation or intoxication. We investigated the extent to which Goffin’s cockatoos (Cacatua goffiniana) exhibit ecollogically relevant and quantifiable neophobic responses toward specific object properties. Twelve cockatoos were presented with 12 novel objects grouped into four distinct categories with unique features: size, color, reflective capacity, and shape. The cockatoos were tested by measuring their latency to...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - February 29, 2024 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Latent inhibition in humans from simple stimulus exposure.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(2), Apr 2024, 118-130; doi:10.1037/xan0000374Two experiments observed an effect consistent with a latent-inhibition (LI) effect in humans that (a) did not depend on masking or instruction-generated expectations and (b) suggested that the effect results from a change in processing of the predictive cue. Participants viewed a video of a superhero character flying through three different contexts past a different stimulus in each context. In conditioning, The superhero flew past a target cue that was either Novel (Group No Exposure), had been preexposed...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - February 15, 2024 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Increasing previous but not concurrent extinction attenuates the “extinction makes acquisition context specific” effect in human predictive learning.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(1), Jan 2024, 39-55; doi:10.1037/xan0000372Four experiments in human predictive learning evaluated whether the extinction makes the acquisition context specific (EMACS) effect is attenuated when the increase in prediction error that extinction produces disappears. Participants had to evaluate the relationship between a given food (cue) that was ingested by an imaginary client of a given restaurant (context) and a potential gastric illness (outcome). The task was implemented using Gorilla online software. All participants received the relevant trainin...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - January 8, 2024 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Stimulus–outcome associations are required for the expression of specific Pavlovian-instrumental transfer.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(1), Jan 2024, 25-38; doi:10.1037/xan0000371A series of experiments employed a specific Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT) task in rats to determine the capacity of various treatments to undermine two outcome-specific stimulus–outcome (S–O) associations. Experiment 1 tested a random treatment, which involved uncorrelated presentations of the two stimuli and their predicted outcomes. This treatment disrupted the capacity of the outcome-specific S–O associations to drive specific PIT. Experiment 2 used a negative-contingency treatment during wh...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - January 8, 2024 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Learning about trial sequences disrupts the partial reinforcement extinction effect in classical conditioning.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(1), Jan 2024, 11-24; doi:10.1037/xan0000370The partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) refers to the phenomenon that conditioned responding extinguishes more slowly if subjects had been inconsistently (“partially”) reinforced than if they had been reinforced on every trial (“continuously” reinforced). One largely successful account of the PREE, known as sequential theory (Capaldi, 1966), suggests that, when subjects are partially reinforced, they learn that memories of sequences of nonreinforced trials are associated with subsequent re...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - January 8, 2024 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

The sequencing of trials during partial reinforcement affects subsequent extinction.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(1), Jan 2024, 1-10; doi:10.1037/xan0000369If a conditioned stimulus or response has been inconsistently (“partially”) reinforced, conditioned responding will take longer to extinguish than if responding had been established by consistent (“continuous”) reinforcement. This partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) is one of the best-known phenomena in associative learning but defies ready explanation by associative models which assume that a partial reinforcement schedule will produce weaker conditioning that should be less resistant to e...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - November 6, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Effect of instructions on the microstructure of human schedule performance.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(1), Jan 2024, 56-68; doi:10.1037/xan0000364Three experiments examined the effect of instructions on human free-operant performance on random ratio (RR) and random interval (RI) schedules. Both rates of responding, and the microstructure of behavior, were explored to determine whether bout-initiation and within-bout responding may be controlled by different processes. The results demonstrated that responding in acquisition (Experiments 1 and 2) and extinction (Experiment 3) was impacted in line with given instructions. During acquisition, rates were h...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - October 26, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Switching from sucrose to saccharin: Extended successive negative contrast is not maintained by hedonic changes.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(4), Oct 2023, 289-295; doi:10.1037/xan0000362Previous experiments found that acceptance of saccharin by rats was reduced if they had prior experience of sucrose or some other highly palatable solution. This reduction in saccharin consumption was particularly extended after a switch from sucrose. On the surface, this seems to correspond to a successive negative contrast (SNC) effect. This term was coined by C. F. Flaherty to describe the situation where consumption of a target solution is reduced by prior experience of a more valuable solution, typica...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - October 26, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

The effects of feature extinction in dual-response feature-positive discriminations.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(4), Oct 2023, 273-288; doi:10.1037/xan0000360In a typical feature-positive discrimination, responding is reinforced (+) during the target stimulus (A) on trials with the feature stimulus (X), but not during target-alone trials (A−). When X and A are presented simultaneously, direct control by X is typically observed; however, when the stimuli are presented serially, X sets the occasion for responding to A. In the current dual-response procedures, one response (e.g., left lever press) was reinforced during feature-target trials (XA+) and a different...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - October 26, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

The role of numerical and nonnumerical magnitudes in pigeons’ conditional discrimination behavior.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(4), Oct 2023, 253-272; doi:10.1037/xan0000368Research on approximate numerical estimation suggests that numerical representations can be influenced by nonnumerical magnitudes. Current theories of numerical cognition differ on the nature of this interaction. The present project evaluated the effect of task requirements on the stimulus control exerted by numerical and nonnumerical magnitudes on pigeons’ numerical discrimination behavior. In a series of experiments, we explored the effects of cumulative area and item size on pigeons’ numerical discr...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - October 26, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Same/different discrimination of motion by pigeons.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(4), Oct 2023, 237-252; doi:10.1037/xan0000359Telling that one object or moment is different from another one is fundamental to cognition and intelligent behavior. Most investigations examining same/different (S/D) concepts in animals have relied on testing static visual stimuli. To move beyond this limitation, we investigated how five pigeons learned and performed a motion S/D discrimination. Using a go/no-go task, dynamic motion fields built from dot elements were presented in sequence to display repeating (same) or changing (different) motions. Eac...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - October 26, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Primacy and recency in snails (Cornu aspersum).
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(4), Oct 2023, 226-236; doi:10.1037/xan0000365Pavlovian conditioning has been proven to be useful for the study of associative learning and animal cognition. This procedure can be used to observe certain memory phenomena. The appetitive conditioning of several neutral stimuli can result in higher response rates, and therefore a better memory, for the first and last stimuli of the series. This is equivalent to primacy and recency effects. In this work, the tentacle lowering procedure was employed to study these phenomena in the snail (Cornu aspersum). ...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - October 26, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research