Comparing elemental and configural associative theories in human causal learning: A case for attention.

In two causal learning experiments with human participants, the authors compared various associative theories that assumed either elemental (unique cue, modified unique cue, replaced elements model, and Harris' model) or configural processing of stimuli (Pearce's theory and a modification of it). The authors used modified patterning problems initially suggested by Redhead and Pearce (1995). Predictions for all theories were generated by computer simulations. Both configural theories and the unique cue approach failed to account for the observations. The replaced elements model was able to account for part of the data, but only if the replacement parameters could vary across discrimination problems. The Harris model and the modified unique cue approach, assuming that the salience of stimuli decreases with an increasing number of stimuli in a compound, successfully accounted for all of our data. This success implies that attentional factors should be explicitly taken into account in associative learning theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The experimental task influences cue competition in human causal learning.

Participants were shown A+ and C- trials followed by AB+ and CD+ trials. These trials were embedded in a causal learning task in which participants had to learn either the relationship between different foods and allergic reactions or the relationship between different stocks and an increase in the stock market index. The authors orthogonally varied the manner in which the different cues were presented to participants during training. Cue competition was related to the causal learning scenario but not to the manner in which the different cues were presented. These results question claims of a human bias toward configural processing that were based on difficulties in finding cue competition in some previous causal learning experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective attention in human associative learning and recognition memory.

Four experiments examined the role of selective attention in a new causal judgment task that allowed measurement of both causal strength and cue recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, blocking was observed; pretraining with 1 cue (A) resulted in reduced learning about a 2nd cue (B) when those 2 cues were trained in compound (AB+). Participants also demonstrated decreased recognition performance for the causally redundant Cue B, suggesting that less attention had been paid to it in training. This is consistent with the idea that attention is preferentially allocated toward the more predictive Cue A, and away from the less predictive Cue B (e.g., N. J. Mackintosh, 1975). Contrary to this hypothesis, in Experiments 3 and 4, participants demonstrated poorer recognition for the most predictive cues, relative to control cues. A new model, which is based on N. J. Mackintosh's (1975) model, is proposed to account for the observed relationship between the extent to which each cue is attended to, learned about, and later recognized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acquired equivalence and distinctiveness in human discrimination learning: Evidence for associative mediation.

In the first stage of Experiments 1-3, subjects learned to associate different geometrical figures with colors or with verbal labels. Performance in Stage 2, in which the figures signaled which of 2 motor responses should be performed, was superior in subjects required to make the same response to figures that had shared the same Stage 1 associate. A third stage of testing showed that the events used as associates in Stage 1 were capable of evoking the motor response trained in Stage 2, an outcome predicted by an associative interpretation of such transfer effects. Experiment 4 provided evidence that the relevant associations can be effective in controlling motor responding even when subjects report an antagonistic relationship between the events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conflict adaptation by means of associative learning.

Cognitive control is responsible for adapting information processing in order to carry out tasks more efficiently. Contrasting global versus local control accounts, it has recently been proposed that control operates in an associative fashion, that is, by binding stimulus–response associations after detection of conflict (Verguts & Notebaert, 2009). Here, this prediction is explicitly tested for the first time. In a task-switching study where both tasks use the same relevant information, we previously reported conflict adaptation over tasks (Notebaert & Verguts, 2008). In the current experiment, we demonstrate that this is restricted to conditions where both tasks use the same effectors, thereby supporting the associative control account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparing patterning and biconditional discriminations in humans.

In two experiments, human participants performed a causal judgment task that simultaneously comprised two reciprocal patterning discriminations and a biconditional discrimination. They learned both patterning discriminations more quickly than the biconditional discrimination. Postdiscrimination tests were used to identify participants who had, or had not, learned to apply the patterning rules, as well as participants who continued to expect summation when presented with two cues that predicted the same outcome. All groups were faster to learn the patterning than the biconditional discriminations. These results are inconsistent with models of stimulus representation that invoke configural representations (e.g., Pearce, 1987, 1994; Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) because these models solve biconditional discriminations more readily than patterning discriminations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Curved saccade trajectories reveal conflicting predictions in associative learning.

We report how the trajectories of saccadic eye movements are affected by memory interference acquired during associative learning. Human participants learned to perform saccadic choice responses based on the presentation of arbitrary central cues A, B, AC, BC, AX, BY, X, and Y that were trained to predict the appearance of a peripheral target stimulus at 1 of 3 possible locations, right (R), mid (M), or left (L), in the upper hemifield. We analyzed as measures of associative learning the frequency, latency, and curvature of saccades elicited by the cues and directed at the trained locations in anticipation of the targets. Participants were trained on two concurrent discrimination problems A+R, AC+R, AX+M, X+M and B+L, BC+L, BY+M, Y+M. From a connectionist perspective, cues were predicted to acquire associative links connecting the cues to the trained outcomes in memory. Model simulations based on the learning rule of the Rescorla and Wagner (1972) model revealed that for some cues, the prediction of the correct target location was challenged by the interfering prediction of an incorrect location. We observed that saccades directed at the correct location in anticipation of the target curved away from the location that was predicted by the interfering association. Furthermore, changes in curvature during training corresponded to predicted changes in associative memory. We propose that this curvature was caused by the inhibition of the incorrect prediction, as previously has been suggested with the concept of distractor inhibition (Sheliga, Riggio, & Rizzolatti, 1994; Tipper, Howard, & Houghton, 2000). The paradigm provides a new method to examine memory interference during associative learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theories of artificial grammar learning.

Artificial grammar learning (AGL) is one of the most commonly used paradigms for the study of implicit learning and the contrast between rules, similarity, and associative learning. Despite five decades of extensive research, however, a satisfactory theoretical consensus has not been forthcoming. Theoretical accounts of AGL are reviewed, together with relevant human experimental and neuroscience data. The author concludes that satisfactory understanding of AGL requires (a) an understanding of implicit knowledge as knowledge that is not consciously activated at the time of a cognitive operation; this could be because the corresponding representations are impoverished or they cannot be concurrently supported in working memory with other representations or operations, and (b) adopting a frequency-independent view of rule knowledge and contrasting rule knowledge with specific similarity and associative learning (co-occurrence) knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An attention-based associative account of adjacent and nonadjacent dependency learning.

In 5 experiments, results showed that when participants are faced with materials embedding relations between both adjacent and nonadjacent elements, they learn exclusively the type of relations they had to actively process in order to meet the task demands, irrespective of the spatial contiguity of the paired elements. These results are consonant with current theories positing that attention is a necessary condition for learning. More important, the results provide support for a more radical conception, in which the joint attentional processing of 2 events is also a sufficient condition for learning the relation between them. The well-documented effect of contiguity could be a by-product of the fact that attention generally focuses on contiguous events. This reappraisal considerably extends the scope of approaches based on associative or statistical processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nicotine enhances context learning but not context-shock associative learning.

Nicotine has been found to enhance learning in a variety of tasks, including contextual fear conditioning. During contextual fear conditioning animals have to learn the context and associate the context with an unconditioned stimulus (footshock). As both of these types of learning co-occur during fear conditioning, it is not clear whether nicotine enhances one or both of these types of learning. To tease these two forms of learning apart, the authors made use of the context preexposure facilitation effect (CPFE). Acquisition of the CPFE requires that contextual and context-shock learning occurs on separate days, allowing for their individual manipulation. Nicotine (0.09 mg/kg) administered prior to contextual learning and retrieval enhanced the CPFE whereas administration prior to context-shock learning and retrieval had no effect. Thus, nicotine enhances contextual learning but not context-shock associative learning. Finally, the results are discussed in terms of a theory of how nicotine could alter hippocampal-cortical-amygdala interactions to facilitate contextual learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observational learning and the effects of model-observer similarity.

This study examined the effects of similarity in competence between model and observer on the effectiveness of observational learning in argumentative writing. Participants ( N=214, 8th grade, mixed ability) were assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: an observation/weak-focus, an observation/good-focus, or a control condition. The two observational-learning groups observed pairs of peer models performing writing tasks. Participants focused respectively on the noncompetent (weak) model or on the competent (good) model. The control group performed the writing tasks themselves. Results are consistent with the similarity hypothesis: Weak learners learn more from focusing their observations on weak models, whereas better learners learn more from focusing on good models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What is learned in sequential learning? An associative model of reward magnitude serial-pattern learning.

A computational model of sequence learning is described that is based on pairwise associations and generalization. Simulations by the model predicted that rats should learn a long monotonic pattern of food quantities better than a nonmonotonic pattern, as predicted by rule-learning theory, and that they should learn a short nonmonotonic pattern with highly discriminable elements better than 1 with less discriminable elements, as predicted by interitem association theory. In 2 other studies, the model also simulated behavioral "rule generalization", "extrapolation", and associative transfer data motivated by both rule-learning and associative perspectives. Although these simulations do not rule out the possibility that rats can use rule induction to learn serial patterns, they show that a simple associative model can account for the classical behavioral studies implicating rule learning in reward magnitude serial-pattern learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Training monitoring skills improves older adults' self-paced associative learning.

We investigated a memory-enhancement program that involved teaching older adults to regulate study through self-testing. A regulation group was taught standard strategies along with self-testing techniques for identifying less well-learned items that could benefit from extra study. This group was compared with a strategy-control group, which was taught only strategies, and with a waiting-list control group. Greater training gains were shown for the regulation group (effect size, d = 0.72) than for the strategy-control (d = 0.28) and waiting-list control (d = 0.03) groups, indicating that training a monitoring skill--self-testing--can improve older adults' learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A direct laboratory comparison of Pavlovian conditioning and traditional associative learning.

24 adult human Ss were presented with a learning task which combined salivary conditioning with traditional associative learning: paired-associate learning of a 50 word Russian-English vocabulary and serial motor learning of a sequence of 100 adjacent bolts. Conditioning proceeded best when Ss did not know they were being conditioned, while associative learning was reasonably effective when Ss knew what they were associating. The view is expressed that the present data support strongly the hypothesis that Pavlov's laws of conditioning are primarily laws of unconscious biological learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Limited attention and cue order consistency affect predictive learning: A test of similarity measures.

The authors empirically tested the similarity metrics underlying 2 predictive-learning theories: J. K. Kruschke's (1992) attention learning covering map and J. M. Pearce's (1987, 1994) configural models. In Experiment 1, participants concurrently learned 3 types of discriminations: simple (A- vs. B+), common cue (XC- vs. XD+), and compound (YE- vs. ZF+). Accuracy was ordered: simple > compound > common cue. Neither model anticipated this ordering. In Experiment 2, cue order in 2-element configurations was either inconsistent (e.g., YE and EY) as in Experiment 1 or consistent (e.g., EY throughout). Although accuracy differences were smaller under consistent ordering, the relative difficulty of the tasks was the same as in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, common cue and compound discriminations were tested in different participants to determine whether the ordering of difficulty in Experiments 1 and 2 was caused by differential generalization mediated by the number of elements; the ordering was the same as in Experiments 1 and 2. These results suggest the need for differential attention to event presence and absence and to mechanisms that incorporate limited attentional capacity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cue interactions in flavor preference learning: A configural analysis.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 37(2) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes (see record 2011-08162-003). There was an error in Figure 3, which is described in the correction.] Four experiments showed that the preference normally established to a neutral flavor cue that was paired with maltodextrin was attenuated when that cue was conditioned in compound with another flavor—overshadowing. Furthermore, two experiments showed that the preference for a neutral flavor conditioned as part of a compound was further attenuated if the other element in that compound was separately paired with the reinforcer—blocking. These results stand in contrast to a number of previous compound flavor preference conditioning experiments, which have not revealed reliable cue competition effects. These discrepant findings are discussed in terms of the effects of within-compound associations and a configural perspective on potentiation. Modeling of this configural perspective predicts that a compound of two separately trained cues will elicit a similar response to the individual cues themselves—absence of summation. Two experiments confirmed this prediction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Where similarity beats redundancy: The importance of context, higher order similarity, and response assignment.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 35(1) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (see record 2009-00768-007). The DOIs for the article and the supplemental materials were incorrectly listed. The correct DOI for the article is 10.1037/a0012320 and the correct DOI for the supplemental materials is http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0012320.supp] People are especially efficient in processing certain visual stimuli such as human faces or good configurations. It has been suggested that topology and geometry play important roles in configural perception. Visual search is one area in which configurality seems to matter. When either of 2 target features leads to a correct response and the sequence includes trials in which either or both targets are present, the result is a redundant-target paradigm. It is common for such experiments to find faster performance with the double target than with either alone, something that is difficult to explain with ordinary serial models. This redundant-targets study uses figures that can be dissimilar in their topology and geometry and manipulates the stimulus set and the stimulus?response assignments. The authors found that the combination of higher order similarity (e.g., topological) among the features in the stimulus set and response assignment can effectively overpower or facilitate the redundant-target effect, depending on the exact nature of the former characteristics. Several reasonable models of redundant-targets performance are falsified. Parallel models with the potential for channel interactions are supported by the data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Temporal contexts: Filling the gap between episodic memory and associative learning.

People can create temporal contexts, or episodes, and stimuli that belong to the same context can later be used to retrieve the memory of other events that occurred at the same time. This can occur in the absence of direct contingency and contiguity between the events, which poses a challenge to associative theories of learning and memory. Because this is a learning and memory problem, we propose an integrated approach. Theories of temporal contexts developed in the memory tradition provide interesting predictions that we test using the methods of associative learning to assess their generality and applicability to different settings and dependent variables. In 4 experiments, the integration of these 2 areas allows us to show that (a) participants spontaneously create temporal contexts in the absence of explicit instructions; (b) cues can be used to retrieve an old temporal context and the information associated with other cues that were trained in that context; and (c) the memory of a retrieved temporal context can be updated with information from the current situation that does not fit well with the retrieved memory, thereby helping participants to best adapt their behavior to the future changes of the environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Associative interference in the verbal learning performance of schizophrenics and normals.

Groups of recently admitted VA schizophrenics and VA nonpsychiatric patients (17 per group) were given 1 of 2 paired-associate lists. The experimental list consisted of pairs in which each stimulus had a minimal assocative connection with its response but was highly associated with another response on the list, as judged by word association norms. Comparisons of performance on this list with that on a parallel control list indicated that the presence of the cross-associates resulted in significant performance decrement (p