Backchaining of relaxation in the extinction of avoidance

After rats were trained in one-way avoidance, two types of nonshock treatment were given to assess the degree to which fear of the shock area is affected by (a) nonshock responding (regular extinction trials) apart from (b) repeated exposure to the shock area in the absence of shock (response prevention). Different groups of regular extinction rats received 1 or 27 trials; response prevention control rats were equated with regular extinction rats on amount of nonshock exposure to the shock area and other variables. Fear of the shock area was measured on a posttreatment passive avoidance test. Regular extinction trials led to less fear of the shock side than response prevention trials when 27 nonshock trials were given. The results (a) suggest that relaxation back-chains from the safe to the shock area over repeated avoidance extinction trials, and (b) clarify existing problems of maintained fear with the response prevention technique.     

Measurement of fear of the conditioned stimulus and of situational cues at several stages of two-way avoidance learning

In Experiment 1, subjects were trained in a signaled two-way avoidance task to a criterion of either 2, 10, or 20 consecutive avoidance responses. Subsequently, they were allowed to escape, in the absence of shock, from one compartment of the avoidance apparatus to an adjacent safe box. For one group at each criterion level, the conditioned stimulus (CS) was presented during these trials; for another group, it was not (NCS). The rate and level of learning of the escape response were taken to reflect the amount of fear of the CS and situational cues present at the end of avoidance training for the CS groups and the amount of fear of the situational cues alone for the NCS groups. Under the CS condition, all groups learned equally well; under the NCS condition, learning occurred only in the two-criterion group. This pattern of results suggests that, as avoidance training continued, differential reinforcement led to the formation of a discrimination so that a substantial amount of fear was elicited by the CS plus situational cues but only a minimal amount by the situational cues alone. Such a loss of fear of situational cues would, according to effective reinforcement theory, serve to maintain or even increase reinforcement as avoidance training progressed. The results of Experiment 2, by ruling out some alternative explanations, supported the interpretation that the learning of the instrumental escape response in the first experiment was based on prior fear conditioning.     

Myopic regret avoidance: Feedback avoidance and learning in repeated decision making

Decision makers can become trapped by myopic regret avoidance in which rejecting feedback to avoid short-term outcome regret (regret associated with counterfactual outcome comparisons) leads to reduced learning and greater long-term regret over continuing poor decisions. In a series of laboratory experiments involving repeated choices among uncertain monetary prospects, participants primed with outcome regret tended to decline feedback, learned the task slowly or not at all, and performed poorly. This pattern was reversed when decision makers were primed with self-blame regret (regret over an unjustified decision). Further, in a final experiment in which task learning was unnecessary, feedback was more often rejected in the self-blame regret condition than in the outcome regret condition. We discuss the findings in terms of a distinction between two regret components, one associated with outcome evaluation, the other with the justifiability of the decision process used in making the choice.