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.

Prediction-based attenuation as a general property of learning in neural circuits.
One of the mechanisms proposed to underpin perceptual learning is the reduction in salience of predicted stimuli. This reduction is held to affect the representation of (conditioned) stimuli before they have been associated with motivationally meaningful consequences but may also affect (unconditioned) stimuli that automatically elicit responding. The purpose of this article is to review past findings and present new evidence of phenomena across a range of domains that are consistent with the idea that responses automatically triggered by stimulating events will be reduced by prediction. We argue that prediction-based atte...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - February 1, 2021 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Some unresolved issues in perceptual learning.
Perceptual learning has been studied extensively using a procedure in which subjects (involving both humans and nonhuman animals) are exposed to two similar stimuli (to be referred to as AX and BX, where A and B represent distinctive features and X the features they hold in common), prior to a test of their ability to discriminate between AX and BX. Performance on the discrimination is found to be enhanced by this procedure, particularly if the preexposure arrangement involves intermixed presentations of AX and BX (a regime that might be expected to facilitate comparison of the stimuli). This perceptual learning effect has...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - February 1, 2021 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Special issue on recent advances in perceptual learning.
This is an introduction to the special issue “Perceptual Learning." This collection of studies reflects some of the interesting new discoveries being made in the study of perceptual learning. Although much headway has been made toward understanding the basic phenomena, this collection of studies makes clear that there is much that remains to be understood. The study of perceptual learning continues to be a fruitful area of research, and it is our hope that this collection, like the Exeter workshop that it was based on, will continue to inspire future research efforts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights re...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - February 1, 2021 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

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 assessm...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - October 8, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Extinction contexts fail to transfer control: Implications for conditioned inhibition and occasion-setting accounts of renewal.
The renewal effect is often explained as a side effect of the extinction context acting as a negative occasion setter. Four experiments tested whether extinction contexts show the selective-transfer property of occasion setters. Experiments 1–3 used a predictive judgment task where participants rated the probability of certain foods (cues) producing gastric malaise (outcomes) in different restaurants (contexts). Experiment 4 used a behavioral suppression task where sensor lights (cues) served as signals to suppress firing responses in certain galaxies (contexts). All 4 (Experiments 1–4) addressed whether a potentially ...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - October 8, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Individual differences in the nature of conditioned behavior across a conditioned stimulus: Adaptation and application of a model.
Pavlovian conditioning procedures produce marked individual differences in the form of conditioned behavior. For example, when rats are given conditioning trials in which the temporary insertion of a lever into an operant chamber (the conditioned stimulus, CS) is paired with the delivery of food (the unconditioned stimulus, US), they exhibit knowledge of the lever–food relationship in different ways. For some rats (known as sign-trackers), interactions with the lever dominate, while for others (goal-trackers), approaching the food well dominates. A formal model of Pavlovian conditioning (HeiDI) attributes such individual...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - August 6, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Short- and long-term habituation of photonegative and exploratory responses in the flatworm planaria (Dugesia).
Two experiments address the habituation of photonegative and exploratory responses in the flatworm planaria (Dugesia). Planarians possess a well-documented photonegative response; Experiment 1 showed that repeated exposures to a bright light source with short inter trial intervals (ITIs) within 1 experimental session gradually weakens the unconditioned photonegative response. In addition, it was found that presentation of an unexpected arousal-increasing stimulus (dropped water or a shock) temporarily re-establishes the photonegative response. Experiment 2 addressed the development of long-term habituation; we recorded the...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Contextual specificity of habituation in earthworms.
This article reports the context specificity of habituation in earthworms (Lumbricidae family). Using earthworms as subjects—which are typically sensitive to odors—the present study sought to evaluate the context specificity of habituation by giving subjects repeated exposures to a bright light in one odorous context, after which they were presented again with the same stimulus in a different context. The recovery of responding in this second context was higher in the group where the odor of this context was different, in comparison with a control group for which the context was the same. To provide further support for...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

When the stimulus is predicted and what the stimulus predicts: Alternative accounts of habituation.
Wagner’s fully elaborated theory of learning (e.g., Vogel, Ponce, & Wagner, 2019) was founded on an initial analysis of the mechanisms responsible for habituation (Wagner, 1976, 1979). Central to its explanation of long-term habituation was the proposal that a predicted stimulus, one signaled by some other event as a consequence of associative learning, would be less effective at activating its central representation. We review evidence (from studies of the role of context in habituation and latent inhibition, of preexposure to the event to be used as an unconditioned stimulus in conditioning, and of conditioned diminuti...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

An associative analysis of recognition memory: Relative recency effects in an eye-tracking paradigm.
We report 2 eye-tracking experiments with human variants of 2 rodent recognition memory tasks, relative recency and object-in-place. In Experiment 1 participants were sequentially exposed to 2 images, A then B, presented on a computer display. When subsequently tested with both images, participants biased looking toward the first-presented image A: the relative recency effect. When contextual stimuli x and y, respectively, accompanied A and B in the exposure phase (xA, yB), the recency effect was greater when y was present at test, than when x was present. In Experiment 2 participants viewed 2 identical presentations of a ...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Interactions between the elements of an outcome in human associative learning.
When a cue is established as a reliable predictor of an outcome (A–O1), this cue will typically block learning between an additional cue and the same outcome if both cues are subsequently trained together (AB–O1). Three experiments sought to explore whether this effect extends to outcomes and was investigated using the food allergist paradigm in human participants. In all 3 experiments, an outcome facilitation effect was observed. That is, prior learning about an element of an outcome compound (A–O1) facilitated learning about a novel outcome when (A–O2) these outcomes were presented together (A–O1 O2) relative t...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

The role of common elements in the redundancy effect.
In 2 experiments, participants received a predictive learning task in which the presence of 1 or 2 food items signaled the onset or absence of stomachache in a hypothetical patient. Their task was to identify the cues that signaled the occurrence, or nonoccurrence of this ailment. The 2 groups in Experiment 1 and the single group in Experiment 2 received a blocking treatment, where Cue A and a combination of Cues A and X both signaled stomachache, A+ AX+. These groups also received a simple discrimination where the outcome was signaled by one compound but not another, BY+ CY–. Subsequent test trials revealed the so-calle...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Within-trial contrast or Wagner’s SOP model: Can they both account for two presumed complex cognitive phenomena?
When humans make biased or suboptimal choices, they are often attributed to complex cognitive processes that are viewed as being uniquely human. Alternatively, several phenomena, such as suboptimal gambling behavior and cognitive dissonance (justification of effort) may be explained more simply as examples of the contrast between what is expected and what occurs as well as Wagner’s Standard Operating Procedure model based on reward prediction error. For example, when pigeons are attracted to choices involving a suboptimal, low probability of a high payoff, as in unskilled gambling behavior, it may be attributed to reward...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

An application of Wagner’s Standard Operating Procedures or Sometimes Opponent Processes (SOP) model to experimental extinction.
The present study used simulations to examine whether Wagner’s Standard Operating Procedures or Sometimes Opponent Processes (SOP) model explains various extinction phenomena. These included the so-called signature characteristics of extinction—renewal, reinstatement, and spontaneous recovery—as well as the effects on extinction of manipulations such as preexposure, the interval between extinction trials, the rate at which reinforcement ceases, and the presence of other stimuli. The simulations showed that SOP accounts for the effects of each of these manipulations. It does so for 2 reasons. First, the form of stimul...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Can the stimulus processing assumptions of the sometimes-opponent-process (SOP) model explain instances of contextual learning?
One of the most persisting assertions in Allan Wagner’s view of conditioning is that the environment or context in which significant events occur can develop an association with these events, more or less in the same way as conditioned and unconditioned stimuli become associated with each other. He was drawn to this idea by evidence of contextual fear conditioning, contingency effects, some instances of context-specificity of long-term habituation, and latent inhibition. From a theoretical point of view, however, homologizing contexts to conditioned stimuli is not as simple as it seems, especially when quantitative theor...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research