Revisiting the relation between contingency awareness and attention: Evaluative conditioning relies on a contingency focus

Although evaluative conditioning has occasionally been demonstrated in the absence of contingency awareness, many recent studies imply that its acquisition depends on the availability of attentional resources during conditioning. In previous experiments attention has typically been manipulated in a general way rather than looking at the particular focus of attention. The present study investigated the role of a focus on the CS–US contingency. Two separate distraction tasks were designed that either diverted attention from the stimuli or directed it to the stimuli while drawing attention away from the contingency between the stimuli. Both types of distraction were shown to eliminate evaluative conditioning. Significant evaluative conditioning was observed in a third group of participants who were required to attend the contingencies. A mediation analysis showed that the observed discrepancy in evaluative conditioning effects between groups was mediated by contingency awareness. The results imply that attention in terms of a stimulus focus is not sufficient for evaluative conditioning to occur. Rather, attention to the contingencies between stimuli appears to be crucial in evaluative conditioning, because it is supposed to foster the acquisition of contingency awareness.     

Beyond awareness and resources: Evaluative conditioning may be sensitive to processing goals

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is often regarded as an automatic affective learning process. Yet, recent empirical evidence suggests that EC may actually be sensitive to contingency awareness and to the availability of attentional resources. Here, we examine for the first time a third horseman of EC automaticity: processing goals. Specifically, we had participants engage an EC task after completing a task known to elicit the goal of processing either the perceptual similarities or the perceptual differences between stimuli. EC was predicted and found to be larger in the former (similarity-focus) than in the latter (difference-focus) condition. This finding provides original evidence that EC is sensitive to the processing goal activated in participants as they encode the CS-US pairings. The theoretical implications of this finding are discussed.     

Fear conditioning in posttraumatic stress disorder: evidence for delayed extinction of autonomic, experiential, and behavioural responses

Aversive conditioning has been proposed as an important factor involved in the etiology of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, it is not yet fully understood exactly which learning mechanisms are characteristic for PTSD. PTSD patients (n=36), and healthy individuals with and without trauma exposure (TE group, n=21; nTE group, n=34), underwent a differential fear conditioning experiment consisting of habituation, acquisition, and extinction phases. An electrical stimulus served as the unconditioned stimulus (US), and two neutral pictures as conditioned stimuli (CS+, paired; CS-, unpaired). Conditioned responses were quantified by skin conductance responses (SCRs), subjective ratings of CS valence and US-expectancy, and a behavioural test. In contrast to the nTE group, PTSD patients showed delayed extinction of SCRs to the CS+. Online ratings of valence and US-expectancy as well as the behavioural test confirmed this pattern. These findings point to a deficit in extinction learning and highlight the role of affective valence appraisals and cognitive biases in PTSD. In addition, there was some evidence that a subgroup of PTSD patients had difficulties in learning the CS-US contingency, thereby providing preliminary evidence of reduced discrimination learning.     

More of myself: Manipulating interoceptive awareness by heightened attention to bodily and narrative aspects of the self

Psychology distinguishes between a bodily and a narrative self. Within neuroscience, models of the bodily self are based on exteroceptive sensorimotor processes or on the integration of interoceptive sensations. Recent research has revealed interactions between interoceptive and exteroceptive processing of self-related information, for example that mirror self-observation can improve interoceptive awareness. Using heartbeat perception, we measured the effect on interoceptive awareness of two experimental manipulations, designed to heighten attention to bodily and narrative aspects of the self. Participants gazed at a photograph of their own face or at self-relevant words. In both experimental conditions interoceptive awareness was significantly increased, compared to baseline. Results show that attention to narrative aspects of self, previously regarded as relying on higher-order processes, has an effect similar to self-face stimuli in improving interoceptive awareness. Our findings extend the previously observed interaction between the bodily self and interoception to more abstract amodal representations of the self.     

Learning to search for visual targets defined by edges or by shading: Evidence for non-equivalence of line drawings and surface representations

A visual search task was used to test the idea that shaded images and their line-drawn analogues are treated identically from an early stage onwards in human vision. Reaction times and error rates were measured to locate the presence or absence of a target in an array of a variable number of distractors. The target was a cube in one orientation and the distractors cubes in a different orientation. The stimuli were defined by lines alone, shading alone, or lines plus shading. Both the slopes and the intercepts of the search functions (graphs of search time against number of displayed items) were higher for the line drawings than for the stimuli defined by shading. Over six experimental sessions, both the slopes and the intercepts fell for all stimuli, but the relative differences between them were maintained. The data suggest that, at an equivalent stage of practice, line-drawn stimuli are processed more slowly than shaded stimuli in early vision.     

Learning to label letters by sounds or names: a comparison of England and the United States

Learning about letters is an important foundation for literacy development. Should children be taught to label letters by conventional names, such as /bi/ for b, or by sounds, such as /b/? We queried parents and teachers, finding that those in the United States stress letter names with young children, whereas those in England begin with sounds. Looking at 5- to 7-year-olds in the two countries, we found that U.S. children were better at providing the names of letters than were English children. English children outperformed U.S. children on letter-sound tasks, and differences between children in the two countries declined with age. We further found that children use the first-learned set of labels to inform the learning of the second set. As a result, English and U.S. children made different types of errors in letter-name and letter-sound tasks. The children's invented spellings also differed in ways reflecting the labels they used for letters.     

Non-Speech Based Pastoral Care: A Pastoral Care Program for Aged Care Residents with Little or No Ability to Speak

SUMMARY

Pastoral care depends on the ability to communicate, most commonly through the medium of speech. The aged person who has suffered illness or accident that has adversely affected their speech, is in great need of pastoral care. Yet chaplains and pastoral carers can feel helpless in the face of such a significant deficit and may not know what to do. At Tregenza Avenue Aged Care Service, the Chaplaincy service has developed helpful individual programs for non-speech based pastoral care. Using visual and tactile symbols, pictures, touch, and music, we have been able to minister to people with a variety of speech problems, with promising results.