Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 
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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.Goal-directed control in Pavlovian-instrumental transfer.
The current article concerns human outcome-selective Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT), where Pavlovian cues selectively invigorate instrumental responses that predict common rewarding outcomes. Several recent experiments have observed PIT effects that were insensitive to outcome devaluation manipulations, which has been taken as evidence of an automatic “associative” mechanism. Other similar studies observed PIT effects that were sensitive to devaluation, which suggests a more controlled, goal-directed process. Studies supporting the automatic approach have been criticized for using a biased baseline, whereas stud...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - January 3, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Biasing performance through differential payoff in a temporal bisection task.
We investigated how differential payoffs affect temporal discrimination. In a temporal bisection task, pigeons learned to choose one key after a short sample and another key after a long sample. When presented with a range of intermediate samples they produced a Gaussian psychometric function characterized by a location (bias) parameter and a scale (sensitivity) parameter. When one key yielded more reinforcers than the other, the location parameter changed, with the pigeons biasing their choices toward the richer key. We then reproduced the bisection task in a long operant chamber, with choice keys far apart, and tracked t...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - January 3, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
On the role of responses in Pavlovian acquisition.
A defining feature of Pavlovian conditioning is that the unconditioned stimulus (US) is delivered whether or not the animal performs a conditioned response (CR). This has lead to the question: Does CR performance play any role in conditioning? Between the 1930s and 1970s, a consensus emerged that CR acquisition is driven by CS–US (CS, conditioned stimulus) experiences, and that CRs play a minimal role, if any. Here we revisit the question and present 2 new quantitative methods to evaluate whether CRs influence the course of learning. Our results suggest that CRs play an important role in Pavlovian acquisition, in such pa...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - January 3, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
The partial reinforcement extinction effect: The proportion of trials reinforced during conditioning predicts the number of trials to extinction.
Four experiments compared the extinction of responding to a continuously reinforced (CRf) conditioned stimulus (conditional stimulus [CS]) consistently reinforced on every trial, with extinction of responding to a partially reinforced (PRf) CS that had been inconsistently reinforced. To equate the acquisition of responding between the two CSs, the average duration of the CRf CS was extended so that it scheduled the same overall rate of reinforcement per unit time as the PRf CS. Experiment 1 used a within-subjects design to compare the rates of extinction for a 10-s PRf CS reinforced on 33% of trials versus a 30-s CRf CS. E...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - January 3, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Conditioned inhibition: Historical critiques and controversies in the light of recent advances.
This article offers a contemporary review of critiques of and controversies over conditioned inhibition and of arguments advanced in its defense. Some of these disputes have been reported in previous reviews, but here we have sought to compile the most representative among them. We also propose new arguments that answer some of those critiques. We then address the most prominent theoretical accounts of conditioned inhibition, identifying commonalities and differences among some of them. Finally, we review recent studies of conditioned inhibition. Some of the new findings contribute to rejecting early critiques of condition...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - January 3, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Learned biases in the processing of outcomes: A brief review of the outcome predictability effect.
Much empirical work and theoretical discussion in the associative learning literature has focused on when and how a cue changes in its associability. A series of new findings in human learning preparations (collectively referred to as the “outcome predictability” effect) appear to show that outcomes vary in their capacity to enter into novel associations as a product of their associative history. This effect is reminiscent of how cues change in associability as a consequence of their reinforcement history. We review the new findings within a broader associative literature that has previously investigated how conditioni...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - January 3, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Short-term memory in habituation and dishabituation of newborn chicks’ freezing response.
Cognitive models of habituation and dishabituation postulate that the latter is attributable to the perturbation of the model of the repeated stimulation stored in short-term memory (STM) by the occurrence of a new stimulus, called dishabituator. However, although both behavioral phenomena depend on STM, previous studies in Aplysia have found that dishabituation seems to require further steps of development of the STM system to emerge. Here, we addressed whether this is a universal condition for the appearance of the 2 forms of learning, namely whether dishabituation must necessarily follow habituation. To this aim, we stu...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - November 8, 2018 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Reward shifts in forced-choice and free-choice autoshaping with rats.
Successive negative contrast (SNC) involves a disruption of behavior when the paired reward is unexpectedly reduced from a large to a small amount, relative to a control always receiving the small amount. Five experiments with rats explored SNC in the Pavlovian autoshaping procedure in which a retractable lever is paired with the delivery of food pellets. In Experiment 1, a 12-to-2 pellet downshift either early in training (after 3 sessions) or late in training (after 20 sessions) yielded no significant evidence of SNC either in terms of lever pressing or goal entries. Experiment 2 showed that presession feeding (another f...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - November 8, 2018 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Log versus linear timing in human temporal bisection: A signal detection theory study.
Using signal detection theory, we investigated whether human participants represent time linearly or logarithmically in a bisection task. Participants saw a stimulus 1.0 to 1.5 s in duration, and then judged whether the stimulus duration was closer to 1.0 s or to 1.5 s, and how sure they were of their response. Whereas the mean of the subjective stimulus duration was a linear function of the objective stimulus duration, participants produced remarkably different psychophysical functions—linear for some participants, concave for others, and convex for still others. Hence, the appropriate question might not be whether huma...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - November 8, 2018 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Extinction makes acquisition context-specific in conditioned taste aversion regardless of the context where acquisition and testing take place.
Retrieval of a flavor–illness association has been found to show contextual dependence when the association is learned after a nontarget flavor–illness association has been extinguished in what has been named as the extinction makes acquisition context-specific (EMACS) effect. Four experiments were designed to further explore the EMACS effect in conditioned taste aversion. Experiments 1 and 2 replicated the EMACS effect using rats that did not experience extinction, and rats that underwent extinction of a different flavor as controls. Experiments 3 and 4 found that the experience of extinction with the nontarget Flavor...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - November 8, 2018 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Stimulus control of actions and habits: A role for reinforcer predictability and attention in the development of habitual behavior.
Goal-directed actions are instrumental behaviors whose performance depends on the organism’s knowledge of the reinforcing outcome’s value. In contrast, habits are instrumental behaviors that are insensitive to the outcome’s current value. Although habits in everyday life are typically controlled by stimuli that occasion them, most research has studied habits using free-operant procedures in which no discrete stimuli are present to occasion the response. We therefore studied habit learning when rats were reinforced for lever pressing on a random-interval 30-s schedule in the presence of a discriminative stimulus (S) b...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - November 8, 2018 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
The nature of phenotypic variation in Pavlovian conditioning.
Pavlovian conditioning procedures result in dramatic individual differences in the topography of learnt behaviors in rats: When the temporary insertion of a lever into an operant chamber is paired with food pellets, some rats (known as sign-trackers) predominantly interact with the lever, while others (known as goal-trackers) predominantly approach the food well. Two experiments examined the sensitivity of these two behaviors to changing reinforcement contingencies in groups of male and female rats exhibiting the different phenotypes (i.e., sign-trackers and goal-trackers). In both phenotypes, behavior oriented to the food...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - November 8, 2018 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Brain mechanisms controlling Pavlovian fear conditioning.
A key insight of associative learning theory is that learning depends on the actions of prediction error: a discrepancy between the actual and expected outcomes of a conditioning trial. This view of learning has inspired, and in turn been supported by, work in the neurosciences ranging from single unit recording and neuroimaging studies to pharmacological, chemogenetic, and optogenetic interventions. Here we review evidence describing how error-correcting learning rules are instantiated in the activity of distributed neural circuits controlling the effectiveness of unconditioned stimuli during Pavlovian fear conditioning. ...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - November 8, 2018 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Human performance on random interval schedules.
Four experiments explored the factors controlling human responding on random interval (RI) schedules of reinforcement. All experiments identified 2 types of responding: “bout-initiation” and “within-bout” responding. Responding on RI schedules was related to the interval value rates, being higher on an RI-30s than on an RI-60s or RI-120s schedule, which impacted bout-initiation responding to the greater degree (Experiments 1 and 3). Experiment 2 found similar overall response rates on random ratio (RR) and random interval with a linear feedback loop (RI+) schedules, with both higher than on an RI schedule. Bout-ini...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 9, 2018 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
Extinguishing cue-controlled reward choice: Effects of Pavlovian extinction on outcome-selective Pavlovian-instrumental transfer.
Outcome-selective Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT) refers to the finding that presenting Pavlovian predictors of outcomes can enhance the vigor of instrumental responding for those same outcomes. Three experiments examined the sensitivity of outcome-selective PIT to Pavlovian (stimulus-outcome) extinction. In Experiment 1, participants first learnt to perform different instrumental responses to earn different outcomes. In a separate Pavlovian training phase, certain stimuli were established as Pavlovian signals of the different outcomes. Some of these Pavlovian stimuli were then extinguished (they were presented alone...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 9, 2018 Category: Zoology Source Type: research
