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.

Transition between habits and goal-directed actions in the renewal effect.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(4), Oct 2023, 209-225; doi:10.1037/xan0000361Three experiments with rats explored whether previously extinguished goal-directed and habitual responding recover with the same status using an ABA renewal preparation. In Experiments 1a and 1b, a lever-press response was minimally (four sessions) or extensively (16 sessions) trained in one context (Context A) and extinguished in another context (Context B). Then, outcome devaluation took place in either Context A or Context B in which a food pellet reinforcing the response was paired with lithium chlorid...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - October 26, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Conditional discrimination learning by pigeons: Stimulus-response chains or occasion setters?
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 50(1), Jan 2024, 69-75; doi:10.1037/xan0000367In conditional discrimination, the conditional stimulus or sample indicates which of two choice or comparison stimuli is associated with a reinforcer. Two hypotheses have been proposed concerning the role of the sample stimulus. According to Hull (1952), the sample and the response to the correct comparison form a stimulus-response chain. According to Skinner (1938), however, the sample serves as an occasion setter, setting the occasion for the choice of the correct comparison stimulus. In a conditional disc...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - September 28, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Correction to Civile et al. (2023).
We report here two large studies investigating the effects of an established transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) procedure on perceptual learning as indexed by the face inversion effect. Experiments 1a and 1b (n = 128) examined the harmful generalization from Thatcherized faces to normal faces by directly comparing the size of the inversion effect for normal faces when presented intermixed with Thatcherized faces (Experiment 1a) versus that obtained when normal faces were presented intermixed with checkerboards (Experiment 1b). The results from the sham/control tDCS groups provide the first direct evidence in th...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - August 17, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Stimulus control and delayed outcomes in a human causality judgment task.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(3), Jul 2023, 179-193; doi:10.1037/xan0000356Three experiments examined the impact of delayed outcomes on stimulus control of causal judgments using an interdimensional generalization procedure. Human participants rated the causal effectiveness of responses on multiple schedules, and then underwent a generalization test. In Experiment 1, a 3 s unsignaled outcome delay reduced ratings of causal effectiveness, relative to an immediate outcome, but had higher ratings compared to a component lacking outcomes. In a generalization test, incremental general...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 13, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Category relevance attenuates overshadowing in human predictive learning.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(3), Jul 2023, 162-178; doi:10.1037/xan0000357In situations in which multiple predictors anticipate the presence or absence of an outcome, cues compete to anticipate the outcome, resulting in a loss of associative strength compared to control conditions without additional cues. Critically, there are multiple factors modulating the magnitude and direction of such competition, although in some scenarios the effect of these factors remains unexplored. We sought to assess whether the relative salience of the elements in a compound of cues modulates the ma...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 13, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Intermixed rapid exposure to similar stimuli reduces the effective salience of their distinctive features.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(3), Jul 2023, 151-161; doi:10.1037/xan0000355Intermixed exposure to two similar stimuli, for example, AX and BX, improves subsequent discrimination between them compared to blocked exposure (the intermixed/blocked effect). Salience modulation models, developed mainly from research with nonhuman animals and exposure to widely spaced similar stimuli, explain this effect in terms of increased salience of the unique elements, A and B. Conversely, the results from experiments initially conducted with humans and exposure to close spaced similar stimuli hav...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 13, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Modulating perceptual learning indexed by the face inversion effect: Simulating the application of transcranial direct current stimulation using the MKM model.
We report here two large studies investigating the effects of an established transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) procedure on perceptual learning as indexed by the face inversion effect. Experiments 1a and 1b (n = 128) examined the harmful generalization from Thatcherized faces to normal faces by directly comparing the size of the inversion effect for normal faces when presented intermixed with Thatcherized faces (Experiment 1a) versus that obtained when normal faces were presented intermixed with checkerboards (Experiment 1b). The results from the sham/control tDCS groups provide the first direct evidence in th...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 13, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Partial reinforcement extinction and omission effects in the elimination and recovery of discriminated operant behavior.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(3), Jul 2023, 194-207; doi:10.1037/xan0000354Three experiments explored how training reinforcement schedules and context influence the elimination and recovery of human operant behavior. In Experiment 1, participants learned a discriminated operant response in Context A before the response was eliminated with extinction in Context B. They then received a final test in each context. Groups were trained with a discriminative stimulus that predicted a reinforced response on either every trial (continuous reinforcement [CRF]) or some of the trials (parti...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - June 1, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Focused-attention mindfulness increases sensitivity to current schedules of reinforcement.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(2), Apr 2023, 127-137; doi:10.1037/xan0000352Four experiments explored the impact of focused-attention mindfulness training on human performance on free-operant schedules of reinforcement. In each experiment, human participants responded on a multiple random ratio (RR), random interval (RI) schedule. In all experiments, responding was higher on RR than RI schedules, despite equated rates of reinforcement. A 10-min focused-attention mindfulness intervention (focused attention) produced greater differentiation between schedules than relaxation training...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 20, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Intricacies of running a route without success in night-active bull ants (Myrmecia midas).
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(2), Apr 2023, 111-126; doi:10.1037/xan0000350How do ants resolve conflicts between different sets of navigational cues during navigation? When two cue sets point to diametrically opposite directions, theories predict that animals should pick one set of cues or the other. Here we tested how nocturnal bull ants Myrmecia midas adjust their paths along established routes if route following does not lead to their entry into their nest. During testing, foragers were repeatedly placed back along their homeward route up to nine times, a procedure called rewi...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 20, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Externalizing forgetting: Delay testing in a long operant chamber.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(2), Apr 2023, 96-110; doi:10.1037/xan0000353In a long operant chamber, pigeons were trained to discriminate between 4-s and 12-s samples in a symbolic matching-to-sample task. Subsequently, delay and no-sample test trials were introduced. The location in the chamber in which the trial started and each comparison was presented varied across three experiments. Our main goals were to assess the effect of the delay and to compare preferences on delayed and no-sample trials. Both pigeons’ preferences and their movement patterns were analyzed. In Experim...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 20, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

The opportunity to compare similar stimuli can reduce the effectiveness of features they hold in common.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(2), Apr 2023, 87-95; doi:10.1037/xan0000349In three experiments, rats were given experience of flavored solutions AX and BX, where A and B represent distinctive flavors and X a flavor common to both solutions. In one condition, AX and BX were presented on the same trial separated by a 5-min interval (intermixed preexposure). In another condition, each daily trial consisted of presentations of only AX or only BX (blocked preexposure). The properties acquired by stimulus X were then tested. Experiment 1 showed that after intermixed preexposure X was le...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 20, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Retardation of acquisition after conditioned inhibition and latent inhibition training in human causal learning.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(2), Apr 2023, 75-86; doi:10.1037/xan0000351Inhibitory 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 late...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 20, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Temporal encoding: Relative and absolute representations of time guide behavior.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(1), Jan 2023, 46-61; doi:10.1037/xan0000345Temporal information-processing is critical for adaptive behavior and goal-directed action. It is thus crucial to understand how the temporal distance between behaviorally relevant events is encoded to guide behavior. However, research on temporal representations has yielded mixed findings as to whether organisms utilize relative versus absolute judgments of time intervals. To address this fundamental question about the timing mechanism, we tested mice in a duration discrimination procedure in which they lea...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - February 16, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Temporal order processing in rats depends on the training protocol.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, Vol 49(1), Jan 2023, 31-45; doi:10.1037/xan0000347The perception of temporal order can help infer the causal structure of the world. By investigating the perceptual signatures of audiovisual temporal order in rats, we demonstrate the importance of the protocol design for reliable order processing. Rats trained with both reinforced audiovisual trials and non-reinforced unisensory trials (two consecutive tones or flashes) learned the task surprisingly faster than rats trained with reinforced multisensory trials only. They also displayed signatures of temporal...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - February 16, 2023 Category: Zoology Source Type: research