Pavlovian conditioning in human skilled motor behavior

The role of Pavlovian contingencies in human skilled motor behavior was investigated in three experiments by means of a new conditioning preparation. In Experiment 1 the present method was shown to be appropriate for the study of associative learning. Subjects who experienced a standard delay configuration performed significantly more conditioned responses than subjects who received either backward conditioning or random pairings. Stimulus generalization was shown to be slight in two additional groups. Subsequent experiments examined conditioning with multiple conditioned stimuli (CSs). In particular, in Experiment 2 some reciprocal overshadowing was demonstrated when two conditional stimuli (tone and vibration) were compounded. Experiment 3 investigated blocking. Blocking was less than expected, however. Subjects’ perceptions of the stimuli and reaction time data suggest that a certain proportion had shifted their attention to the added element of the CS compound. Results are discussed in relation to other studies on Pavlovian learning in humans and animals, which are concerned with “stimulus selection.”     

Stimulus control of Pavlovian facilitation

Two experiments were conducted using an autoshaping procedure with pigeons to examine whether dimensional stimulus control by a Pavlovian facilitator parallels the control established following operant discrimination training. Facilitation training consisted of the presentation of a black vertical line on a white background as the B stimulus in a feature-positive discrimination in which the A stimulus (white keylight) was followed by grain presentation only if preceded by B. In this way, B facilitates or sets the occasion for pecking at A. Subsequent testing for generalization along the line-orientation dimension produced decremental gradients when the facilitation paradigm incorporated an explicit feature-negative stimulus (B−). These results parallel the decremental control obtained following operant discrimination training and suggest that Pavlovian facilitators and instrumental discriminative stimuli are functionally equivalent.     

Pavlovian processes in the motivational control of instrumental performance

Hungry rats were rewarded for pressing a lever on a multiple schedule. During one component the reward was a sucrose solution, whereas food pellets acted as the reward during another component. Lever pressing was never rewarded during the third component. When the drive state was switched from hunger to thirst and the animals tested in extinction, they pressed more in the presence of the component stimulus that had been associated with the sucrose reward during training. A similar effect was observed during the extinction test of a second study in which the component stimuli had signalled non-contingent presentations of either the sucrose or pellet rewards in the absence of the lever. This suggests that the instrumental irrelevant incentive effect observed in the first experiment was due, at least in part, to the Pavlovian relationship between the component stimuli and the reinforcers during training. In fact, when the size of the effects controlled by purely Pavlovian and supposedly instrumental contingencies was compared directly in the final study, no difference could be detected.     

Theoretical mechanisms underlying the trial-spacing effect in Pavlovian fear conditioning.

Contemporary explanations of the trial-spacing effect (TSE) were evaluated. Experiment 1 revealed, in rats given tone-footshock trials with 15-, 60-, or 900-s intertrial intervals (ITIs), a direct relationship between freezing to the tone and ITI (the TSE) but an inverted U-shaped relationship between freezing to the training context and ITI. In Experiment 2, footshock preexposure eliminated the TSE that otherwise occurs across 15- to 60-s ITIs but had no effect on the TSE that occurs across 60- to 900-s ITIs. In Experiments 3 and 4, neither (a) increasing posttraining exposure to the training context in rats trained with 60-s ITIs nor (b) reducing between-trial exposure to this context in rats trained with 900-s ITIs influenced freezing to the tone. These findings suggest that the TSE obtained in this research is due to more than 1 mechanism: 1 responsible for the TSE that occurs with ITIs less than approximately 60 s and another responsible for the TSE that occurs with ITIs greater than this. Although the perceptual-defensive-recuperative model may correctly describe the former mechanism, none of the theories tested seems to correctly describe the latter.     

Pavlovian conditioned inhibition of fear during shuttlebox avoidance behavior

Three experiments explored the development and function of conditioned inhibition of fear during the acquisition and maintenance of shuttlebox avoidance behavior. The development of inhibition to an exteroceptive feedback stimulus was found to be a function of the number of successive avoidance responses to which the animal had been trained and of the duration of the intertrial interval, a parameter shown also to affect the rate of acquisition of avoidance learning. Master animals who learned the instrumental avoidance response, and yoked animals who did not, showed equivalent inhibitory fear conditioning in each experiment. The results of one experiment suggest that conditioned inhibition plays no important role in “protecting” fear conditioned to the discrete warning signal during avoidance maintenance. These data indicate that feedback stimuli develop their inhibitory properties by a Pavlovian process and that certain aspects of their function may, therefore, be readily understood within the framework of mediational two-process learning theory.     

Pavlovian influences on goal-directed behavior in mice: the role of cue-reinforcer relations

Two experiments refined procedures to study Pavlovian influences on goal-directed behavior in mice and studied the effects of CS-US relations in Pavlovian-instrumental interactions. Independent groups of mice underwent Pavlovian training to associate either a 10-sec or 2-min auditory stimulus (CS) with reward. We next assessed the ability of the response-contingent CS presentations to reinforce novel instrumental responding (conditioned reinforcement; CRf) or the ability of noncontingent CS presentations to increase ongoing instrumental responding (Pavlovian-instrumental transfer; PIT). Whereas 10-sec training conditions produced strong CRf (and no PIT), 2-min training conditions produced robust PIT (but no CRf).     

Facilitation of instrumental behavior by a Pavlovian appetitive conditioned stimulus

Three experiments examined appetitive Pavlovian-instrumental interactions by presenting separately trained conditioned stimuli (CSs) during reinforced instrumental responding in rabbits. Intra-oral reinforcement was used to minimize interference from peripheral responses such as magazine approach. In experiment 1, the rabbits were first trained to perform an instrumental head-raising response for sucrose reward. A conditioned jaw movement response was then established to a 2-sec CS by pairing it with sucrose; a control stimulus was unpaired with sucrose. Instrumental responding maintained by a variable-interval 40-sec schedule was enhanced during 10-sec presentations of the paired, but not the unpaired, CS. Responding on a variable-ratio 15 schedule was unaffected except on trials on which the pre-CS baseline response rate was low; in such cases the paired CS caused a long-lasting acceleration of responding. Noncontingent presentation of the sucrose reinforcer itself briefly suppressed responding but had no long-term effect. In Experiment 2, a CS that had been conditioned at a 10-sec duration produced the same pattern of effects as in the first study, indicating that facilitation resulted from CS presentation rather than from the frustrative effects of non-reinforcement of the CS. In Experiment 3 an inhibitory CS blocked facilitation by the excitatory CS but did not itself affect instrumental responding. These results support the view that Pavlovian processes play a positive role in instrumental performance and suggest that previous findings of suppression by a short-duration CS reflect peripheral interference. The dependence of facilitation on the baseline level of responding is discussed in terms of associative and motivational theories of Pavlovian mediation.     

The social control of behavior control: behavior modification, Individual Rights, and research ethics in America, 1971-1979

In 1971, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights began a three-year study to investigate the federal funding of all research involving behavior modification. During this period, operant programs of behavior change, particularly those implemented in closed institutions, were subjected to specific scrutiny. In this article, I outline a number of scientific and social factors that led to this investigation and discuss the study itself. I show how behavioral scientists, both individually and through their professional organizations, responded to this public scrutiny by (1) self-consciously altering their terminology and techniques; (2) considering the need to more effectively police their professional turf; and (3) confronting issues of ethics and values in their work. Finally, I link this episode to the formation of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, whose recommendations resulted in changes to the ethical regulation of federally funded human subjects research that persist to the present day.     

Operant and Pavlovian factors in cross-response transfer of inhibitory stimulus control

Experiment 1 used a within-response procedure to compare inhibitory stimulus control of the extinction cue in multiple variable interval-extinction (mult VI EXT) and the variable time cue in multiple variable interval-variable time (mult VI VT). Experiment 2A made the same comparison using a crossresponse procedure. In addition, Experiment 2A also tested the extinction cue in multiple variable time-extinction (mult VT EXT), and Experiment 2B tested the variable time cue in mult VT EXT. Unlike the mult VI EXT and mult VI VT conditions, the mult VT EXT condition was administered in the absence of a response manipulandum. The main findings of the present study were: (1) cross-response suppression by the variable time cue in mult VI VT; (2) greater response suppression by the extinction cue in mult VI EXT than by either the variable time cue in mult VI VT or the extinction cue in mult VT EXT; and (3) response facilitation by the variable time cue in mult VT EXT. These findings indicate that inhibitory stimulus control based on an operant source (i.e., absence of an R-S contingency) does transfer across responses, and that such transfer cannot be explained in terms of competing responses. These findings also indicate that operant and Pavlovian sources of stimulus control summate algebraically to determine the inhibitory strength of the extinction cue in mult VI EXT. Finally, the third finding is not consistent with notions that emphasize the importance of location and localization of cues explicitly paired with positive events.     

Pavlovian to instrumental transfer of control in a human learning task

Pavlovian learning tasks have been widely used as tools to understand basic cognitive and emotional processes in humans. The present studies investigated one particular task, Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT), with human participants in an effort to examine potential cognitive and emotional effects of Pavlovian cues upon instrumentally trained performance. In two experiments, subjects first learned two separate instrumental response-outcome relationships (i.e., R1-O1 and R2-O2) and then were exposed to various stimulus-outcome relationships (i.e., S1-O1, S2-O2, S3-O3, and S4-) before the effects of the Pavlovian stimuli on instrumental responding were assessed during a non-reinforced test. In Experiment 1, instrumental responding was established using a positive-reinforcement procedure, whereas in Experiment 2, a quasi-avoidance learning task was used. In both cases, the Pavlovian stimuli exerted selective control over instrumental responding, whereby S1 and S2 selectively elevated the instrumental response with which it shared an outcome. In addition, in Experiment 2, S3 exerted a nonselective transfer of control effect, whereby both responses were elevated over baseline levels. These data identify two ways, one specific and one general, in which Pavlovian processes can exert control over instrumental responding in human learning paradigms, suggesting that this method may serve as a useful tool in the study of basic cognitive and emotional processes in human learning.     

Anticipating the consequences of social behavior

Some forms of psychological theory explain behavior in part by its consequences. The consequences are called reinforcing if the behavior is strengthened; punishing if the behavior is weakened. Through repetition, the consequences eventually become generalized or anticipated. While social psychology has used consequences extensively in its manipulations, this has been implicit rather than explicit. This paper reviews ten such manipulations over ten areas of social psychology for the first time and shows how implicit consequences can determine social behavior. The problems with executing and interpreting these manipulations are extensively discussed. It is concluded that the notion of “anticipating the consequences of social behavior” can bring unity to many areas of social psychology and provide a sound motivational basis.     

Neural mechanisms of social influence

The present investigation explores the neural mechanisms underlying the impact of social influence on preferences. We socially tagged symbols as valued or not – by exposing participants to the preferences of their peers – and assessed subsequent brain activity during an incidental processing task in which participants viewed popular, unpopular, and novel symbols. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) differentiated between symbols that were and were not socially tagged – a possible index of normative influence – while aspects of the striatum (the caudate) differentiated between popular and unpopular symbols – a possible index of informational influence. These results suggest that integrating activity in these two brain regions may differentiate objects that have become valued as a result of social influence from those valued for non-social reasons.     

On insirumental response interaction as explaining the influences of Pavlovian CSs upon avoidance behavior

The finding that Pavlovian signals for food or shock influence avoidance responding might be explained either by interaction of conditioned central mediational states or interaction of learned instrumental responses. Using three groups of dogs, the two hypotheses were pited one against the other in a three-stage transfer-of-control experiment. In the initial conditioning phase, tones were established as signals for food, shock, or neither; additionally the tones also cued a common instrumental response. Following avoidance training, the tone was tested for its influence upon avoidance. If the lone had signaled food, avoidance was suppressed; if shock, avoidance was facilitated; if neither, avoidance was unaffected. This was interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that interaction of central states mediates the transfer-of-control.     

testing informal social control theory: examining lewd behavior during mardi gras

This exploratory study extends Forsyth's research on lewd behavior during Mardi Gras by testing Sampson and Laub's (1993) theory of informal social control. Lewd Conduct at Mardi Gras is defined as the exposure of one's genitals, anus, vulva, or female breast nipples, or engaging in oral or penetrative sex in any public place open to the view of people. The overall findings do not support Sampson and Laub's theory of informal social control. Yet, significant findings did reveal that people who have high incidences of divorces and engagements are more likely to participate in lewd behavior during Mardi Gras. It is suggested that future researchers incorporate Forsyth's methodology by using qualitative research when studying lewd behavior during Mardi Gras.     

Pavlovian conditioned stimulus effects upon instrumental choice behavior are reinforcer specific

In a transfer-of-control experiment with rats, Pavlovian CSs were tested for the specificity of their effects. The instrumental behavior consisted of a discriminative, conditional two-lever choice task in which qualitatively different appetitive reinforcers were contingent upon the two correct choices. In a Pavlovian phase, subjects experienced conditioning to establish either a CS⁺ or CS^? for one reinforcer or a CS⁺ or CS^? for the other reinforcer. Finally, in a test, these CSs were presented when there was the opportunity to make choice responses. The CS⁺s evoked choices of the lever which had eventuated in the reinforcer that had served as the Pavlovian US, while the CS^?s showed only a slight tendency to evoke the other choice responses. When the CSs were compounded with the original S^Ds, the CS⁺s had little effect upon the vigor of responding while the CS^?s reduced the vigor of responding to the S^D for the reinforcer that was the same as the US used in establishing the CS^?. The results are discussed in terms of associative mediational theory and the reinforcer specificity of Pavlovian conditioned excitation and inhibition.     

Self-efficacy and social behavior

Data regarding the relationship between self-efficacy and social behavior are limited, and questions remain about how to interpret the relationship of self-efficacy to phobic behavior in general. The current study includes data regarding the relationship between self-efficacy ratings and social behavior. The data also allow tests of an alternative hypothesis that self-efficacy ratings represent a general prediction regarding the likely outcome regarding a task. If this hypothesis is correct, the relationship of self-efficacy to behavior should be moderated by task familiarity. The study involved 124 socially anxious participants who gave at least partial data on a variety of measures, including three speaking tasks. In accordance with the alternative hypothesis, self-efficacy ratings best predicted behavior in reference to a familiar speaking task. Overall, self-efficacy showed only a moderate tendency to predict behavior.