Role of context in performance on a random schedule in autoshaping.

In 3 experiments an autoshaping preparation was used to explore the role of the training context in performance to a randomly trained keylight tested elsewhere. A recent model of conditioned performance advanced by Miller and Schachtman (1985) holds that performance to a conditioned stimulus (CS) is inversely related to the updated value of its training context, regardless of the location of testing. A CS trained in a random relation to the unconditioned stimulus (US), therefore, might be expected to control either excitatory or inhibitory tendencies, depending on the value subsequently assigned to its training context. Experiment 1 revealed no evidence for such a prediction using keylight stimuli trained initially on a random schedule. Subsequent inflation or deflation of the training context endowed the stimuli with neither inhibitory nor excitatory properties. Exp 2 yielded similar results for a keylight given excitatory properties prior to being placed on a random schedule. Finally, Exp 3 produced similar evidence in a design using temporally discrete stimuli to model the functional role of the context in a random schedule. The implications of these results for other models of performance on random schedules (e.g., Gibbon & Balsam, 1981; Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of signals for unconditioned stimulus absence in the sensitivity of autoshaping to contingency.

Pigeons autoshape to a keylight conditioned stimulus (CS) that is poorly correlated with a food unconditioned stimulus (UCS) if UCSs occurring in the absence of the CS are signaled by some other cue. Three experiments examined if this is because signaling blocks context conditioning or because it converts the intertrial interval (ITI) into a predictor of UCS absence. Results indicated that cuing periods of UCS absence was not sufficient for acquisition. Signaling failed to produce acquisition if the signal also accompanied the CS, although this procedure converts the ITI into a predictor of UCS absence. The detrimental effect of compounding the signal with the CS occurred only if the signal was separately paired with the UCS, which suggests it was due to blocking of the CS by the signal. The results suggested that the signaling effect depends on blocking of the context by the signal, not on conversion of the ITI into a signal for UCS absence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquisition and extinction in autoshaping.

C. R. Gallistel and J. Gibbon (2000) presented quantitative data on the speed with which animals acquire behavioral responses during autoshaping, together with a statistical model of learning intended to account for them. Although this model captures the form of the dependencies among critical variables, its detailed predictions are substantially at variance with the data. In the present article, further key data on the speed of acquisition are used to motivate an alternative model of learning, in which animals can be interpreted as paying different amounts of attention to stimuli according to estimates of their differential reliabilities as predictors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Configural analysis of summation in autoshaping.

In 4 experiments, pigeons received autoshaping with various combinations of three stimuli, A, B, and C, before test trials in which responding during all three stimuli, ABC, was compared with that during a three-element control compound, DEF, which had been consistently paired with food. Pairing A, B, and C individually with food resulted in similar rates of responding during ABC and DEF (Experiments 1 and 2). Responding was faster, however, during ABC than during DEF after training in which food was signaled by the pairs of stimuli (AB, AC, and BC; Experiment 1). Responding was also faster during ABC than during DEF after training involving reinforced (+) and nonreinforced (°) trials of the form ABC+ A° BC°, followed by A+ BC+ (Experiment 2), or AB+ BC+ B° (Experiments 3 and 4). The results are consistent with those of a configural analysis of summation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mechanisms underlying spontaneous recovery in autoshaping.

Four experiments used an autoshaping preparation with pigeons to examine the mechanisms underlying spontaneous recovery following extinction training. Experiment 1 served to establish the optimum conditions for studying recovery in autoshaping. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that recovery occurs during testing in the middle of a session in the presence of contextual cues uniquely associated with extinction. Such findings are inconsistent with several popular models of extinction. Experiment 4 involved endowing a stimulus with both excitatory and inhibitory properties. Both properties were reduced by extinction training and then recovered after a delay. This result is inconsistent with the notion that extinction training generates inhibitory associations that fade over time. However, it supports the idea that extinction results in a temporary reduction in processing of the conditioned stimulus. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of context in accessing distant information during reading.

In 3 experiments, the authors investigated factors that influence accessibility of backgrounded goal information. Participants read texts consisting of 2 episodes. In the 1st episode, the goal was satisfied or unsatisfied. Following a statement of goal satisfaction or goal postponement, there was a 2nd unrelated episode. After completion of the 2nd episode, target sentences were presented that were consistent with the 2nd episode but were inconsistent with completion of the earlier unsatisfied goal. Participants noticed the inconsistency only when the conflicting information was separated by a few sentences or when the context of the goal had been reinstated. The results are consistent with the resonance model described by J. E. Albrecht and E. J. O'Brien (see record 1994-00399-001) and by J. L. Myers, E. J. O'Brien, J. E. Albrecht, and R. A. Mason (see record 1995-39562-001). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of signaling intertrial unconditioned stimuli in autoshaping.

Context–UCS associations have been suggested as the mediator of the response decrement that occurs when extra UCSs are added to the intertrial intervals (ITIs) of a standard Pavlovian conditioning situation. The present autoshaping experiments were concerned with the effect of signaling those extra UCSs, since such signaling might be expected to lessen their ability to condition the context. In Exp I, 16 female Carneaux pigeons were trained in Skinner boxes before receiving pretraining with the CS to be used as the signal of the ITI UCSs. During the main training, Ss were given autoshaping with a keylight CS. Exp II used a tone CS with 31 Ss. Results show that signaling the ITI UCSs did reduce their detrimental effects in responding to the CS. To determine whether that reduction was due to an impact of signaling on the target-CS/UCS association or on performance to the target-CS, Exp III examined responding to differentially trained CSs in a common context, as well as responding to identically trained CSs in differentially trained contexts with 32 Ss. More responding occurred to the CS trained with signaled, as compared with unsignaled, ITI UCSs; further, there was more responding to that CS in the more highly valued context. Results suggest that contextual value does interact with CS–UCS learning and may also affect performance to the CS. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Redundant treatment of neutral and excitatory stimuli in autoshaping.

Five autoshaping experiments with pigeons exposed excitatory and neutral stimuli to treatments that made those stimuli uninformative with respect to the unconditioned stimulus (US). Experiment 1 found that adding sufficient USs in the absence of the conditioned stimulus (CS) to make it uninformative prevented conditioning of that CS but did not undermine conditioning of a previously trained CS. Experiment 2 found a similar data pattern when an excitatory or neutral B stimulus was embedded in an A+/BA+ paradigm with an excitatory A. Experiments 3–5 verified that finding when the salience of A and B or the conditioning level of B was varied. These results, which are largely unanticipated by current theories of conditioning, suggest that the consequences of making a stimulus redundant depend on its conditioning level prior to that treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Explicitly unpaired procedure as a response elimination technique in autoshaping.

In 4 experiments, with 113 wild and White Carneaux pigeons, autoshaped keypecking was eliminated by presenting an excitatory keylight and food in an explicitly unpaired relation. However, keypecking recovered when all food presentations were subsequently omitted (simple extinction). Exps I and II suggested that the recovery effect could not be explained by nonassociative processes, because both response elimination and response recovery were specific to the keylight involved in the explicitly unpaired relation. Exp III suggested that the effect could not be explained in terms of a food-related cue protecting the keylight from extinction, because food–keylight spacing did not affect the degree of subsequent recovery. Exp IV evaluated the possibility that signaling food presentations during response elimination might influence the degree of recovery. Greater recovery occurred after explicitly unpaired food presentations had been signaled than when they were unsignaled, suggesting that signaling reduced the development of inhibition during the response elimination phase. Implications for current theories of associative learning are discussed. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of a stimulus intervening between CS and US in autoshaping.

Five experiments explored the effect of placing a stimulus between the termination of a key light (CS) and the onset of a food (UCS) with female Carneaux pigeons in an autoshaping preparation. Whether that stimulus was itself a key light evoking pecking or an auditory event failing to evoke pecking, it facilitated performance to the CS. The use of a within-Ss design made differential conditioning of background cues and stimulus generalization unlikely accounts. Exp III found that extinction of the intervening stimulus did not remove the facilitative effect. Exp IV found that pairing the CS with food and the intervening stimulus did not produce the effect unless both occurred on the same trial. Together, these experiments rule out an account in terms of 2nd-order conditioning of the CS by the intervening stimulus. Exp V used an intervening stimulus in a 2nd-order conditioning design to demonstrate that the stimulus acted to improve the association between the CS and the reinforcer. Results document a kind of catalytic effect of the intervening stimulus on the CS-reinforcer association. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of ethanol on Pavlovian autoshaping in rats

Approach responses, consummatory behaviors, and directed motor responses maintained by food reward resemble autoshaping CRs and are increased by lower doses of ethanol. This study evaluated the effects of presession i.p. injections of ethanol doses (0.00, 0.25, 0.50, 0.70. or 1.00 g/kg) on the acquisition of lever-press autoshaping CR performance in groups of male Long-Evans hooded rats. Paired groups received 15 daily sessions of Pavlovian autoshaping procedures, wherein the insertion of a retractable lever for 5 s (CS) was followed by the response-independent presentation of food (US). Ethanol facilitated lever-press autoshaping CR acquisition, as revealed by dose-related increases in the number of trials on which CRs were performed. The form of the dose-effect curve was inverted U-shaped with maximal responding induced during sessions 1-5 by the 0.70 g/kg ethanol dose. A similar dose-effect curve was observed during sessions 11-15, revealing that the effects of ethanol on autoshaping CR performance were relatively stable. A pseudoconditioning control group injected presession with 0.50 g/kg ethanol received training wherein the food US was presented randomly with respect to the lever CS. Few lever-presses were performed by the Random 0.50 group, indicating that ethanol's effects on autoshaping CR acquisition and maintenance observed in the Paired 0.50 group were not due to its psychomotor activating effects. A non-injection control group performed more autoshaping CRs than did the control group injected presession with saline, indicating that daily presession i.p. injections per se suppress autoshaping CR performance. Results reveal that low doses of ethanol enhance Pavlovian conditioning of directed motor and consummatory-like responding maintained by food reward. Implications for autoshaping accounts of impulsivity and drug abuse are considered.     

Role of relationship context in influencing college students' responsiveness to HIV prevention videos.

This research examined the effectiveness of different HIV prevention videos for students as a function of whether they were in a dating relationship. Two hundred two college students completed pretest measures and were randomly assigned to watch one of three 42-min videos (communication skills, technical skills, combined skills). Posttest and 3-month follow-up data indicated that receiving the technical skills video was associated with greater self-efficacy for condom use across several different dimensions. However, students who received the combined skills video and were not currently in a dating relationship had the greatest proportion of protected acts of intercourse. These findings suggest that video-based interventions can be an effective way of decreasing risky sexual behavior, and that HIV prevention messages that focus on both technical and communication skills are the most successful in leading to behavioral change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An interpretation of autoshaping and related phenomena in terms of stimulus-incentive contingencies alone.

Attempts to explain the emergence and maintenance of instrumental responses, as well as the topography of the responses, wholly in terms of stimulus-incentive (S:IS) contingencies. A detailed examination of the behavior displayed in 4 training procedures (autoshaping, omission-training, superstition, and shaping) points to the following tentative conclusions: (a) The emergence, maintenance, and topographies of the instrumental responses displayed in all the above training paradigms can be explained by the relative incentive-motivational values of situational stimuli. (b) It is not necessary to invoke any contribution of response-incentive (R:IS) contingencies in order to explain the behavior in these training procedures. (c) Certain features of the observed instrumental responding that are usually attributed to adventitious R:IS contingencies are not controlled by R:IS contingencies, but by S:IS contingencies. The generalizability of these conclusions to instrumental responses displayed in other types of learning paradigms remains to be investigated. (French summary) (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of context in the expression of learning-induced plasticity of single neurons in auditory cortex.

Classical conditioning produces frequency-specific plasticity of receptive fields (RFs) of single neurons in cat auditory cortex (D. M. Diamond and N. M. Weinberger; see record 1987-14817-001). In this article we show that although plasticity may be observed during both training trials and determination of RFs, it is usually expressed in a qualitatively different form (e.g., decreased response during conditioning vs. increased response to this same conditioned stimulus in the postconditioning RF). This differential expression of learning-induced plasticity provides evidence for a role of context in neurophysiological mechanisms of learning in auditory cortex. A model of cortical neurons functioning within a mosaic of influences is presented. The Functional Mosaic model views the induction and expression of plasticity as separate processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictive accuracy and the effects of partial reinforcement on serial autoshaping.

Five experiments examined the influence of partial reinforcement on serial autoshaping in 120 male pigeons. In Exp I, Group 1 received 2 sequences of events: A followed by B followed by food, or A alone. Group 2 always received the AB sequence, reinforcement being presented on 50% of the trials. Ss responded more rapidly during A in Group 1. Exp II replicated this finding and confirmed that it was not due to differences in the density of the conditioning trials. A similar outcome was observed in Exp III, which also indicated that the differences between the groups were not due to differences in the reinforcing properties of B. Results are interpreted in terms of J. M. Pearce and G. Hall's (see record 1981-02676-001) model of Pavlovian learning, which states that responding during A in Group 1 was high because this stimulus is an inaccurate predictor of its immediate consequences. Results from Exps IV and V support and extend this analysis. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Importance of relative temporal parameters in trace autoshaping: From excitation to inhibition.

Studied the role of the relative durations of CS–UCS gap and intertrial interval (ITI) in 2 autotracing experiments. In Exp I, CS–UCS gap duration was held constant at 12 sec, and the ITI was systematically varied between 15 and 240 sec across 5 groups of 6 female White Carneaux pigeons. Conditioned excitation (CS-approach) emerged at ITIs of greater than 60 sec, and conditioned inhibition (CS-withdrawal) emerged at ITIs of less than 60 sec. In Exp II, with 50 Ss, the time between successive UCSs averaged 87 sec, and the duration of the CS–UCS gap varied from 6 to 72 sec. CS-approach was observed only in the 6-sec gap condition, and CS-withdrawal developed with gaps of 24 sec or more. Findings indicate that the relative durations of CS–UCS gap and the ITI are more important than is the absolute degree of CS–UCS contiguity in determining whether and what type of conditioning occurs on trace arrangements. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of predictive accuracy on serial autoshaping: Evidence of orienting responses.

In four experiments we examined the influence of the predictive accuracy of the first element of a serial compound on the rate of autoshaped keypecking. In Experiment 1 a single group of pigeons received trials on two keys. On one key, Stimulus A was followed by either 5-s conditioned stimulus (CS) or a different CS of 20-s duration. On the other key, Stimulus B was also followed by different stimuli, but both were randomly either 5- or 20-s duration. All trials ended with the delivery of food. It was found that responding was faster during A than B. Experiment 2 replicated this finding by using a between-groups design. In Experiments 3 and 4 response rates were faster to A, which was followed on some trials by a 10-s duration CS and on others by a 30-s duration CS, than to B, which was always followed by a 10-s duration CS. These results can be most readily explained by the proposal that autoshaped keypecking consists of two kinds of response—a conditioned response and an orienting response—and the strength of the latter is inversely related to the accuracy with which the immediate consequences of the CS can be predicted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender and adult roles: Role commitment of women and men in a job-family trade-off context.

The dimensionality that underlies the preferences of female (n?=?87) and male (n?=?31) college students for combining work and parent roles was investigated using conjoint measurement techniques. Both groups construed the role trade-offs and intensity of involvement with these roles differently as they applied to women and men. Results for female roles confirm and extend L. C. Coombs's (1979) findings—both women and men perceived a job–child trade-off dimension and a total involvement (percentage of time devoted to job and number of children desired) dimension for women. Results differed for male roles. Students perceived these life roles to be independent, rather than contingent, choices for men. The trade-off context is important for assessment and counseling. The perceived independence of these roles for men poses a dilemma regarding counseling practice for both sexes: whether to confirm sex role perceptions or explore discrepancies in expectations and equity implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parent protection in context.

S. Goldberg, J. E. Grusec, and J. M. Jenkins (see record 1999-15264-001) made a strong and interesting case for distinguishing parents' protective abilities from generalized responsiveness in the study of infant–parent attachment. The endorsement of a narrow approach in the study of attachment, however, should not occur at the expense of gaining insights about potentially complex processes underlying parent protection. Three issues are addressed in the commentary: (a) A parent's protective behavior needs to be understood in relation to a particular infant, (b) the family context needs to be examined as a backdrop for understanding parents' caretaking behavior and its effectiveness, and (c) the processes involved in the development of the infant–mother relationship may not necessarily be the same processes that underlie the development of the infant-father attachment relationship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)