Journal of Experimental Psychology-Animal Learning and Cognition最新文献

Sign-tracking behavior, also known as "autoshaping," is defined as the approach and interaction with reward-predictive cues. It is associated with addiction-related phenotypes and compulsive behavior. Several previous studies have demonstrated that when there is uncertainty about reward properties (e.g., probability and magnitude), sign tracking is increased. However, the effect of cue uncertainty on sign-tracking behavior is not known. Here, using a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, we held the duration of cues constant and manipulated the temporal uncertainty by implementing either fixed or variable intertrial intervals (ITIs) of different durations across groups of mice. Variable ITIs create temporal uncertainty about when the next cue will occur as well as uncertainty about the interval from the last reward until the next one. We found that temporal uncertainty during acquisition significantly enhances sign tracking, which persists during extinction, even when ITI variability was different in the extinction session than in the acquisition session. This suggests that the effects of temporal uncertainty are learned and retained rather than performance based. Our results demonstrate that sign-tracking behavior is not only modified by the characteristic of the reward, but it can also be modified by uncertainty regarding cues. These findings highlight how temporal predictability shapes cue-directed behaviors and has implications for understanding addiction and compulsive disorders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Pavlovian conditioning procedures generate spatially and temporally distinct behaviors. For example, after rats have received pairings of a lever with food, they approach the food well during the lever (called goal-tracking) and interact with it (called sign-tracking), with these two spatially distinct behaviors being distributed differently across the temporal duration of the lever. Experiment 1 assessed the development of these spatiotemporally defined behaviors during first-order conditioning, as a function of the sequence in which the lever and food occurred (lever→food or food→lever) and the interval between them (1 s or 11 s). In Experiment 2, the same rats received higher-order conditioning trials in which an auditory stimulus was paired with the lever and the emergence of goal-tracking to the auditory stimulus was assessed. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 revealed dissociations between where and when learning was evident during first- and higher-order conditioning, underscoring the need for models of Pavlovian conditioning to explain both the nature and timing of different conditioned responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Pavlovian conditioning plays a crucial role in promoting well-being and supporting healthy behaviors but also contributes to the development of diseases and psychopathologies. Much of the basic and applied research on these conditioning processes has focused on external or exteroceptive cues (tone, spider, context, and brewery) as the conditioned stimulus (CS) or occasion setter. Considerably less empirical effort has been devoted to studying Pavlovian conditioning involving internal or interoceptive stimuli, such as indigestion, low blood sugar, back pain, or drug intoxication function as the CS or occasion setter. In this targeted review, we focus on our research on the interoceptive stimulus effects of nicotine. We summarize methods employing discriminated goal-tracking that have been refined over the years to investigate how the function of the nicotine stimulus changes with excitatory or inhibitory conditioning protocols. That research provides substantive evidence indicating that what is known about Pavlovian conditioning with exteroceptive stimuli generally holds for the nicotine stimulus-extinction, CS salience, generalization, overshadowing, blocking, conditioned inhibition, devaluation, and overexpectation. Extension of the interoceptive conditioning methodology to include intravenous nicotine as a stimulus found that the nicotine stimulus acquires additional reinforcing value when previously paired with an appetitive outcome. In closing this review, we highlight notable gaps in the literature and discuss potential directions for research and conceptual development. Ultimately, we hope to encourage others to consider the intersection of interoception and Pavlovian conditioning in their area of scientific inquiry. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Habits are important in everyday life and are thought to be involved in several human behavioral pathologies, including addictions. Experiments with rats suggest that habit, as indexed by insensitivity of an instrumental response to separate devaluation of its outcome, develops with extended practice. Motivated behavior often involves a sequence or chain of behaviors (Rs), with each cued by a different discriminative stimulus (S). We therefore examined performance of a two-response discriminated heterogeneous behavior chain (R1-R2) in which R1 and R2 were occasioned by different Ss and were both required to earn a reinforcer. We further asked whether extended training decreases the sensitivity of R1 to the extinction of R2, which is known to decrease R1 and is analogous to an outcome devaluation effect. In Experiment 1 with rats, R1 was sensitive to extinction of R2 after moderate but not extended training, suggesting the development of habit. In Experiment 2, human participants learned three R1-R2 chains before one "R2" was extinguished. Extinction of R2 specifically decreased performance of the R1 that had been associated with it, but extended training did not reduce this effect. Based on findings in the nonhuman literature, Experiment 3 then had human participants learn only one R1-R2 chain before R2 was extinguished. Under these conditions, R1 became insensitive to extinction of R2 after extended training, consistent with the idea that habit can develop in a laboratory experiment with humans. The findings are discussed relative to difficulties demonstrating habits in humans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Latent inhibition refers to the observation, made in both human and nonhuman animals, that learning about the relationship between a stimulus and an outcome progresses more rapidly when the stimulus is novel compared to when the stimulus has been rendered familiar by preexposure. Three experiments with human participants show that this effect can be reversed to reveal faster learning about a familiar than a novel stimulus, by manipulating the novelty/familiarity of the experimental context. In each experiment, during Stage 1, a preexposed stimulus was rendered familiar by being repeatedly presented within a stream of distractor letters that constituted the experimental context. In a subsequent training stage, participants were required to respond to a target outcome that was preceded by the familiar stimulus on some trials and a novel stimulus on others. These trials were also presented within a stream of contextual distractor stimuli. The results showed that during the training stage, learning about the familiar stimulus proceeded more successfully than the novel stimulus when the distractor stimuli sustained novelty during training (Experiments 1-3), but that this effect could be reverted to latent inhibition when the distractor stimuli sustained familiarity during training (Experiments 2 and 3). The results are in keeping with a novelty-mismatch analysis of latent inhibition, and a novelty-mediated generalization explanation of the results is proposed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Extinction may alter the representation of a cue (e.g., it becomes less salient). To assess that idea, three groups learned to suppress mouse clicking in a video game in negative-patterning (X+/Y+/XY-) and positive-patterning (Z+/W+/ZW++) discriminations followed by extinction of X and Z. The negative-patterning discrimination should depend on a configural cue that is dependent on the representation of X and Y. Removal of the excitatory influence of X should further reduce responding to XY. In contrast, if extinction alters the representation of X, the original XY configural cue supporting the discrimination should also be changed, affecting inhibitory control, increasing responding to XY. Following patterning, groups received extinction in the same context as training (Ext A), a different context (Ext B), or received no extinction (no extinction). All stimuli were tested in Context A. Group no extinction showed negative patterning; suppression to X and Y was greater than to XY while suppression to Z, W, and ZW was equally strong. In group Ext A extinction reduced suppression to X, increased suppression to XY, reversed the X/XY discrimination, and weakened the Y/XY discrimination. Extinction of Z reduced suppression to Z with no effect on W or ZW. Group Ext B showed renewal of X and a renewal of the X/XY and Y/XY discriminations. Results suggest some form of representational change in X occurred during extinction disrupting the original XY configural cue that was dependent on that representation. Findings are discussed with respect to theories of associative learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In a learning environment, with multiple predictive cues for a single outcome, cues interfere with or enhance each other during the acquisition process (e.g., Baker et al., 1993). Previous experiments have focused on cues that signal the presence or absence of binary outcomes. This introduces a perceptual and perhaps motivational asymmetry between excitatory and inhibitory learning. Here, using a bidirectional outcome, we asked whether learning about both generative (incremental positive outcome) and preventative (incremental negative outcome) causal cues show similar enhancement effects in opposite directions. In three experiments with humans using predictive learning tasks, participants (N = 133) were exposed to probabilistic predictive cues for opposite polarity events. Generative cues caused an increase in outcome likelihood, while preventative cues decreased it. An analysis of explicit predictive ratings found evidence for symmetrical learning and enhanced learning for both generative and preventative cues. The results are discussed in relation to super learning, an effect derived from theories of competitive learning based on error correction and theories of contrasting probability estimates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In three experiments, participants were asked to mentally count how many target stimuli appeared in a sequence of presentations, without informing them that there were two types of stimuli (AX and BX) with a specific difference. Some participants received intermixed AX and BX presentations (INT groups), while others received the presentations in blocks (BLK groups). In all three experiments, the INT group showed a greater ability to differentiate the stimuli in a posttest compared to the BLK group. In Experiment 1a, where AX and BX were drawings of plants that differed in the number of petals, the improvement in differentiation was accompanied by the ability to identify the specific difference. However, in Experiments 1b and 2, where AX and BX were robots with a more subtle difference in eye separation, the improvement in differentiation occurred without participants being able to indicate what the difference between the stimuli was. These results suggest that intermixed preexposure can generate, without the need for initial instructions to look for differences between stimuli, both explicit (Experiment 1a) and implicit (Experiments 1b and 2) beneficial effects on stimulus differentiation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The expression of an association between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US) can be attenuated by presenting the CS by itself (i.e., extinction, Ext). Though effective, Ext is susceptible to recovery effects such as renewal, spontaneous recovery, and reinstatement. Dunsmoor et al. (2015, 2019) have proposed that pairing the CS with a neutral outcome (novelty-facilitated Ext [NFE]) could offer better protection against recovery effects than Ext. Though NFE has been compared to Ext, it has rarely been compared to counterconditioning (CC), a similar procedure except that the CS is paired with a US having a valence opposite to the US used in initial training. We report two aversive conditioning experiments using the rapid-trial streaming procedure with human participants that compare the efficacies and susceptibilities to ABA renewal of Ext, CC, and NFE. Associative learning was assessed through expectancy learning and evaluative conditioning. CC and NFE equally decreased anticipation of the US in the presence of the CS (i.e., expectancy learning). Depending on how the CS-US association was probed, they were either as or more effective at doing so than Ext. All three interference treatments were equally susceptible to context manipulations. Only CC clearly altered the valence of the CS (i.e., evaluative conditioning). Valence ratings after Ext, CC, and NFE, as well as a no-interference control condition, were all equally susceptible to context effects. Overall, the present study does not support the assertion that NFE is consistently more resistant to recovery effects than Ext. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

In two experiments, participants completed two computer-based tasks: a configural acquired equivalence procedure and an optional-shift procedure. Both revealed that test performance was positively correlated, even when controlling for nonspecific variables. This finding supports the suggestion that a common mechanism underlies performance in both tasks. Experiment 2 included eye tracking to the stimuli used in the task. We found that participants who attended to the predictive compound elements in the optional-shift training went on to show stronger attentional-set effects in the subsequent test. The relationship between attention and performance is considered by reference to attentional and nonattentional learning theories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).