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)     

Cue discovery in probabilistic environments: Uncertainty and experimentation.

It is argued that cue discovery is an important part of the task of learning from experience in probabilistic environments. Cue discovery involves the identification of new valid predictive cues, and their incorporation into the learner's mental model. In contrast, previous work in "multiple-cue probability learning" has focused principally on learning the quantitative characteristics of given cue–criterion relations. In two studies presented here, 36 college students learned to predict the behavior of a computer-controlled graphic display. The criterion behavior was a function of four to six cues, including several not explicitly identified. Analyses of test results, verbal reports, and behavior during learning indicate that subjects used outcome feedback to accomplish cue discovery. This process was accomplished more effectively when subjects were permitted to experiment by designing their own learning experiences. A distinction is drawn between a system whose behavior is unpredictable because of the presence of unknown controlling variables, and one that contains "random" error. Cue discovery may be more difficult in the latter case, but is accomplished nonetheless. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol Increases Reliance on Cues That Signal Acts of Control.

This study examined the effects of alcohol on the ability to execute and inhibit behavior in a context in which preliminary information signaled the likelihood that a response should be executed or suppressed. Adults (N = 24) performed a cued go/no-go task that required quick responses to go targets and suppression of responses to no-go targets. Cue dependency was manipulated by varying the predictive validity of the cues, and performance was tested under 3 doses of alcohol: 0.00 g/kg, 0.45 g/kg, and 0.65 g/kg. Dose-dependent increases in cue dependence were only observed with highly predictive cues. Results suggest that alcohol-induced increases in stimulus control over behavior might be most likely in situations when stimulus control over behavior has already been established. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) spatial attention reflexively triggered by gaze cue?

Humans show a reflexive shift in spatial attention triggered by gaze cues. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have an excellent ability to follow another's gaze, but they exhibit a limited capacity to engage in triadic interactions based on joint attention, suggesting the possibility of contributions of the different mechanisms underlying joint attention between humans and chimpanzees. The present study thus examined how the chimpanzee's visual spatial attention is triggered by gaze cues. Two chimpanzees showed no clear signs of attention shift triggered by various kinds of nonfacial and facial stimuli with averted gaze under the letter-discrimination tasks but showed significant cueing effects when the head-turning cue was presented in a quasi-dynamic manner. These cueing effects were, however, affected by the predictability of the gaze cue: Highly predictive gaze cues caused stronger cueing effects than less predictive cues. Thus, these results suggest that the shift in spatial attention caused by gaze cues does occur in chimpanzees, but, in contrast to humans, vulnerability against the cue predictability suggests that the voluntary mechanism contributes more dominantly than the reflexive mechanism to this attention shift. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Simon effect with and without awareness of the accessory stimulus.

The authors investigated whether a Simon effect could be observed in an accessory-stimulus Simon task when participants were unaware of the task-irrelevant accessory cue. In Experiment 1A a central visual target was accompanied by a suprathreshold visual lateral cue. A regular Simon effect (i.e., faster cue-response corresponding reaction times [RTs]) was found. Experiment 1B demonstrated that this effect cannot be attributed to perceptual grouping of the target and cue. Experiments 2A, 2B, and 2C showed a reverse Simon effect (i.e., faster noncorresponding RTs) when participants were not aware of the cue. In this condition, the Simon effect would occur relative to the reorientation of attention from the cue, which would initially capture attention, toward the target. This conclusion is supported by the results of Experiments 3A and 3B, in which the reorientation of attention was induced by having the target flash after its onset. With suprathreshold cues either a reverse or regular Simon effect was observed by using a 100-ms or ≥200-ms onset flashing interval, respectively, whereas with subthreshold cues a reverse Simon effect was found irrespective of the interval length. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cue familiarity but not target retrievability enhances feeling-of-knowing judgments.

Two hypotheses concerning people's ability to predict later memory performance for unrecalled items were investigated. The target retrievability hypothesis states that feeling-of-knowing judgments (FKJs) are based on partial target information, and the cue familiarity hypothesis asserts that they are based on recognition of the cues. In Exps 1 and 2, Ss either generated or read the targets of paired associates. Half of the cues had been primed in a pleasantness-rating task. The generation manipulation increased recall but had no effect on FKJs. Cue priming had no effect on recall but increased FKJs. In Exp 3, using general information questions primed after the initial recall attempt, both cue and target priming increased FKJs. Exp 4, which remedied difficulties in Exp 3, showed no effect of target priming, whereas cue priming increased FKJs. The results favor the cue familiarity hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cue reactivity as a predictor of drinking among male alcoholics.

Social learning theories suggest that conditioned responses may increase the risk for relapse. Responses to alcohol use cues (cue reactivity) are associated with variables suggestive of risk but little research exists on the relationship of cue reactivity to treatment outcome. Alcoholic men admitted for detoxification to a treatment program (n?=?45) underwent a cue reactivity assessment protocol, and 91% received 3-mo follow-up interviews. Greater salivary reactivity predicted greater frequency of drinking during follow-up. Attentional factors added independent variance to the prediction of drinking outcome, with greater attention to stimulus or to response predicting less drinking. Cue reactivity did not predict length of hospital stay or latency to first drink. Results are discussed in the context of information processing, social learning theories, and clinical implications for relapse prevention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of blocking on overt attention and associability in human learning.

Previous studies have demonstrated a retardation in the rate of novel learning about previously blocked cues as compared to appropriate control cues. We report an experiment investigating whether this retardation in novel learning about a blocked cue is accompanied by a reduction in attention to this cue, as anticipated by attentional theories of associative learning. Consistent with these theories, eye gaze measures revealed a reduction in overt attention to the blocked cue both during the compound training phase of the blocking procedure, and also during novel learning with respect to new outcomes. Moreover, the extent of the bias in overt attention away from blocked cues was positively correlated with the subsequent reduction in rate of novel learning about these cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of cue salience on the behavior of obese and normal subjects.

Hypothesized that a Body Weight * Cue Salience interaction would occur in determining responsiveness to external cues. Ss were 37 normal and 33 obese male high school students. Obese Ss were expected to be more responsive than normal Ss to highly salient external cues and less responsive to low salient cues. Salience was manipulated by varying the loudness of an auditory cue. Results support the hypothesis (p     

Changes in cue associability across training in human causal learning.

A series of experiments studied the amount learned about two food cues (A and B) whose presentation in a meal was followed by an allergy (+) in a fictitious patient. Participants were trained with A+ and C+ in Phase 1 and then with AB+ or AB++ in Phase 2. Subsequent testing revealed that BC was more allergenic than AD, showing that more had been learned about B than A in Phase 2. Participants were also trained with A+, then with AB+, and finally with AB++. The results of interpolating AB+ between A+ and AB++ training were consistent with the hypothesis that pretraining with Cue A selectively suppressed attention to its associate across the AB+ trials and, thereby, reduced the amount subsequently learned about B on AB++ trials. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cue competition effects and young children’s causal and counterfactual inferences.

The authors examined cue competition effects in young children using the blicket detector paradigm, in which objects are placed either singly or in pairs on a novel machine and children must judge which objects have the causal power to make the machine work. Cue competition effects were found in a 5- to 6-year-old group but not in a 4-year-old group. Equivalent levels of forward and backward blocking were found in the former group. Children’s counterfactual judgments were subsequently examined by asking whether or not the machine would have gone off in the absence of 1 of 2 objects that had been placed on it as a pair. Cue competition effects were demonstrated only in 5- to 6-year-olds using this mode of assessing causal reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cue distinctiveness and forgetting: Effectiveness of self-generated retrieval cues in delayed recall.

Determinants of cue-dependent forgetting were examined in four experiments. The variability in meaning of retrieval cues was proposed as one central factor underlying cue-dependent forgetting. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that the instructions to the subjects to focus their generation on certain distinctive properties of the target items reduced the variability in meaning of the generated cues. Experiment 2 revealed that the properties generated under these instructions served as very effective cues after retention intervals up to 6 weeks. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the rate of forgetting was significantly lower when distinctive, in contrast to nondistinctive, retrieval cues were provided at delayed tests. Cue distinctiveness was proposed as an alternative to the traditional context-reinstatement approach for optimizing cue–trace compatibility. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Antecedents and effects of perceived therapist credibility: A meta-analysis.

Published studies examining antecedents or effects (or both) of perceived therapist credibility were subjected to a meta-analytic review to test S. R. Strong's (1968) 2-phase model of interpersonal influence in counseling. Results conformed to the predictions of the model, with therapist credibility cues moderately related to credibility, and credibility strongly related to therapist influence. Cue type was a significant moderator of the relation between cues and credibility. Cue types were also differentially related to influence, but this relation was mediated by cue strength, or the relation of cues to credibility. Tests of differential reactivity among influence measures yielded equivocal results, as did tests of participant involvement as a moderator of the relation between cues and influence. It is suggested that a simple mediational model cannot fully account for the relations among cues, credibility, and influence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word recognition cues used in matching verbal stimuli within and between auditory and visual modalities.

Administered a matching-to-sample task to 60 first graders under 4 conditions, 2 intra- and 2 intermodal. The 5 matching cues (letters and segments) were used differentially within the 4 conditions with the initial segment selected most frequently in all conditions. The 5 cues were also used differentially across the 4 task conditions. Cue choice was related to reading achievement in the visual-to-visual matching condition, with the good readers using the final word segment cue significantly more often than the initial and final consonant cue. The reading achievement of those selecting the reversal, initial word segment, or final word segment did not differ. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrospective revaluation of causal judgments under positive and negative contingencies.

Retrospective revaluation of causal judgments was investigated in a 2-stage procedure. In the 1st stage, compounds of 2 cues were associated with the outcome, whereas in the 2nd stage, a cue from each compound was trained by itself. Associating this cue with the outcome in the 2nd stage had no detectable effect on the causal rating of the other cue from the compound, whereas presenting it without the outcome enhanced the causal rating of the other cue. The retrospective revaluation of the causal rating of these productive cues and also of preventative cues depended on consistent pairing of the cues during compound training, suggesting a role for within-compound associations. These results favor associative accounts of retrospective revaluation that use separate excitatory and inhibitory learning processes rather than a general error-correcting learning algorithm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overt attention and predictiveness in human contingency learning.

Two experiments used eye-tracking procedures to investigate the relationship between attention and associative learning in human participants. These experiments found greater overt attention to cues experienced as predictive of the outcomes with which they were paired, than to cues experienced as nonpredictive. Moreover, this attentional bias persisted into a second training phase when all cues were equally predictive of the outcomes with which they were paired, and it was accompanied by a related bias in the rate of learning about these cues. These findings are consistent with the attentional model of associative learning proposed by Mackintosh (1975), but not with that proposed by Pearce and Hall (1980). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective attention in animal discrimination learning.

2 classes of experiment on the role of attention in discrimination learning are reviewed: (a) Investigations of the effect of attention on the amount learned about different cues have been interpreted as disproving noncontinuity theory (according to which animals attend to only 1 cue at a time). The fact that animals learn something about a 2nd cue, however, does not prove that attention has no effect on learning, and more recent evidence shows that it does. (b) If animals do not automatically attend to all cues, part of what they must learn in order to solve a discrimination problem is to attend to the relevant cue. Experiments on the acquired distinctiveness of cues, transfer along a continuum, and reversal learning provide evidence for the importance of such classificatory learning. (155 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conditioned inhibition produced by extinction-mediated recovery from the relative stimulus validity effect: A test of acquisition and performance models of empirical retrospective revaluation.

Empirical retrospective revaluation is a phenomenon of Pavlovian conditioning and human causal judgment in which posttraining changes in the conditioned response (Pavlovian task) or causal rating (causal judgment task) of a cue occurs in the absence of further training with that cue. Two experiments tested the contrasting predictions made by 2 families of models concerning retrospective revaluation effects. In a conditioned lick-suppression task, rats were given relative stimulus validity training, consisting of reinforcing a compound of conditioned stimuli (CSs) A and X and nonreinforcement of a compound of CSs B and X, which resulted in low conditioned responding to CS X. Massive posttraining extinction of CS A not only enhanced excitatory responding to CS X, but caused CS B to pass both summation (Experiment 1) and retardation (Experiment 2) tests for conditioned inhibition. The inhibitory status of CS B is predicted by the performance-focused extended comparator hypothesis (J. C. Denniston, H. I. Savastano, & R. R. Miller, 2001), but not by acquisition-focused models of empirical retrospective revaluation (e.g., A. Dickinson & J. Burke, 1996; L. J. Van Hamme & E. A. Wasserman, 1994). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparing learned predictiveness effects within and across compound discriminations.

In four human learning experiments, we examined the extent to which learned predictiveness depends upon direct comparison between relatively good and poor predictors. Participants initially solved (a) linear compound discriminations in which one or both of the stimuli in each compound were predictive of the correct outcome, (b) biconditional discriminations where only the configurations of the stimuli were predictive of the correct outcome, or (c) pseudodiscriminations in which no stimulus features were predictive. In each experiment, subsequent learning and test stages were used to assay changes in the associability of each stimulus brought about by its role in the initial discriminations. Although learned predictiveness effects were observed in all experiments (i.e., previously predictive cues were more readily associated with a new outcome than previously nonpredictive cues), the same changes in associability were observed regardless of whether the stimulus was initially learned about in the presence of an equally predictive, more predictive, or less predictive stimulus. The results suggest that learned associability is not controlled by competitive allocation of attention, but rather by the absolute predictiveness of each individual cue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Knowing what to remember and forget: a developmental study of cue memory in intentional forgetting

These experiments are the first to investigate children's encoding and use of information about a memory cue in Bjork's (1972) intentional forgetting task. In Experiment 1, children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 and college students were given cues to either remember or forget after the presentation of each picture. Recall and recognition tests of pictures and cues followed. The procedure in Experiment 2 was identical to that in Experiment 1 except that the list of presentation pictures was altered for some children (Grades 3 and 4) and adolescents (Grades 8 and 9) so that remember and forget cues were associated with particular taxonomic categories. In Experiment 3, the testing component was modified so that children (Grades 2, 3, and 4) and college students were asked to recall only the cue associated with each picture. The results indicated that (1) children as young as second graders encode the cue associated with each picture, although to a lesser extent than do college students, (2) much improvement in intentional forgetting is still occurring during adolescence, (3) only adults adequately cluster their recall by cue, (4) associating remember and forget cues with items from different categories does not increase the differentiation between cues, and (5) eliminating picture recall and recognition has minimal effects on the magnitude of cue judgments. These results suggest that children's difficulties on intentional forgetting tasks stem, at least in part, from their poorer encoding of information about whether an item should be remembered or forgotten.