The fate of redundant cues in human predictive learning.

Abstract

In each of three experiments, a single group of participants received a sequence of trials involving pictures of a variety of foods presented individually or in pairs. Participants were required to predict in which trials the food would lead to a hypothetical allergic reaction. The different trials involved blocking, A+ AX+, and a simple discrimination, BY- CY+, in which each letter stands for a different food. Training trials were followed by a test in which participants were asked to predict how likely each kind of food would be followed by the allergic reaction. The principal purpose of the experiments was to determine how the redundant cue from blocking, X, would be judged relative to the redundant cue from the simple discrimination, Y. In contrast to predictions from currently influential theories of associative learning, X was regarded as a better predictor for the allergic reaction than Y.