The US preexposure phenomenon in the conditioned suppression paradigm: A role for conditioned situational stimuli

Four experiments evaluated possible associative and nonassociative accounts of the retardation in the acquisition of conditioned suppression produced by repeated prior exposure to an electric shock US. Associative interference resulting from conditioning of situational stimuli during preexposure to shock was suggested by the findings that signaling the occurrence of high-intensity shock with a discrete nontarget CS during the preexposure phase reduced the magnitude of the retardation effect compared to an unsignaled shock preexposure treatment (Experiments 1 and 4), nonreinforced presentations of putatively conditioned situational stimuli prior to conditioned suppression training reduced the magnitude of the retardation effect (Experiment 2), and the magnitude of the retardation effect was directly related to the intensity of preexposure shock (Experiment 3). Nonassociative interference was suggested by the finding that signaling the occurrence of low-intensity shock with a discrete nontarget CS during the preexposure phase did not reduce the magnitude of the retardation effect compared to an unsignaled shock preexposure treatment (Experiment 4). It was suggested that associative and nonassociative mechanisms govern the US preexposure phenomenon obtained in the conditioned suppression paradigm, and their relative contribution depends upon the intensity of shock.     

The development of conceptual and rote recall skills among school age children

One hundred eighty children from Grades K, 5, and 9 performed a recall task within one of four instructional conditions: serial recall; standard free recall; labeling free recall; labeling cued recall. The task required that Ss view and recall items from three successively presented sets of categorized pieture stimuli. Controls were imposed upon the associatice relatedness of items within sets so as to minimize the occurrence of associative responding during recall. The clustering data showed that kindergarten and fifth grade children are able to use conceptual skills to effectively mediate recall, but fail to effect these skills on a spontaneous basis in free recall. The results were discussed in line with the hypothesis that young children fail to engage in planful cognitive activity in recall tasks.     

The influence of positive and negative reinforcement on selective attention in the rat

In Experiments 1 and 2 rats were trained under two multiple schedules of reinforcement. In one, bar pressing during a tone-light compound stimulus was reinforced under a variable-interval food reinforcement schedule. In the other multiple schedule, bar pressing avoided grid shock on a free-operant schedule. In both multiple schedules, a discrimination was maintained by an extinction schedule that was operative during the absence of the tone-light compound. In Experiments 1 and 2 the intensity of the tone-light compound was manipulated over three levels. Subsequent extinction tests revealed that light was attended to, almost exclusively of the tone, when food reinforcement had maintained bar pressing. On the other hand, the tone gained considerable attentional control under the shock avoidance schedule. This stimulus-reinforcer interaction was maintained for all three levels of the compound intensity. In Experiment 3 it was investigated whether this interaction was associative by presenting shock during the absence of the tone-light compound when food reinforcement maintained responding, and food during the absence of the compound when shock avoidance maintained responding. Since both food and shock were presented during a single session for both schedules, nonassociative effects of the reinforcing stimuli were equivalent across the schedules. Nevertheless, the stimulus-reinforcer interaction was maintained, indicating that the interaction was an associative effect.     

Preconditioning exposure to the unconditined stimulus affects the acquisition of a conditioned emotional response

Four experiments examined the UCS preexposure phenomenon using conditioned suppression of food-reinforced responding as a measure of excitatory conditioning, and electric shock as a UCS. In Experiment 1, groups of rats were preexposed to unsignaled 0.8-mA electric shocks for 0, 1, 3, 5, or 10 days, and then conditioned with a 0.8-mA electric shock. Preexposure to electric shock 1 day prior to conditioning enhanced the acquisition of a CER, whereas preexposure to electric shock for 3, 5, or 10 days prior to conditioning attenuated the acquisition of a CER as a direct function of the number of days of preexposure. In Experiments 2 and 2A, groups of rats were preexposed to unsignaled electric shocks of 0.3, 0.5, 0.8, or 1.3 mA for 10 days, and then conditioned with a 0.8-mA electric shocl. All groups preexposed to electric shock acquired the CER at a slower rate than a group not preexposed to electric shock. The greatest attenuation of CER conditioning occurred when the same intensity electric shock was used during both the preexposure and conditioning phases. In Experiment 3, groups of rats were preexposed to signaled electric shocks of either 0.5, 0.8, or 1.3 mA, and then conditioned with a 0.8-mA electric shock. All groups preexposed to electric shock acquired the CER at a slower rate than a group not preexposed to electric shock. As in Experiments 2 and 2A, the greatest attenuation of CER conditioning occurred when the same intensity electric shock was used during both the preexposure and conditioning phases. In Experiment 4, groups of rats were preexposed to series of 0.5, 0.8, or 1.3-mA electric shocks which they could escape by performing a chain-pull response. Rats in each of these groups had yoked partners which received the same number, intensity, and temporal pattern of electric shocks, but could not perform a response to escape shock. All groups were then conditioned with a 0.8-mA electric shock. Rats preexposed to escapable electric shocks showed equal or greater attenuation of CER conditioning than rats which could not escape shock during the preexposure phase. These results are discussed in terms of nonassociative and associative explanations of the UCS preexposure phenomenon.     

Mechanisms of blocking by contextual stimuli

The influence of contextual stimuli on the conditioning and performance of responding to a discrete stimulus was examined in the US preexposure paradigm using both context shift manipulations and a measure of context conditioning. Four groups of rats received both repeated exposure to an electric shock US in one context (Context 1), and repeated nonshocked exposure to a second context (Context 2). Two additional groups of rats received exposure to these contexts, but never received shock presentations. Rats exposed to shock learned to escape from the stimuli of Context 1, but did not escape from the stimuli provided by Context 2. Rats not exposed to shock failed to escape from either context. All rats then received a single CER conditioning session in which four pairings of a 3-min noise CS and shock US were presented. Half the rats received those CS-US pairings in the excitatory Context 1, while the remaining rats received those pairings in the neutral Context 2. Finally, half the rats in each of the CER conditioning treatments received extinction test trials of the noise CS in Context 1, while the remaining rats received those test trials in Context 2. Thus, this design factorially manipulated the presence of excitatory or neutral contextual stimuli during both conditioning and testing of a discrete CS. In comparison with the two groups of rats never preexposed to shock alone, attenuation in acquisition of conditioned suppression observed during test trials occurred only when CER conditioning had been administered in the excitatory Context 1, and this effect was manifested when testing occurred in either the excitatory Context 1 or the neutral Context 2. These results support the model of R. A. Rescorla and A. R. Wagner (1972) (in A. H. Black & W. F. Prokasy (Eds.) Classical Conditioning II, pp. 64–99, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts) which asserts that contextual stimuli and sicrete CSs compete for limited associative strength supportable by a given US.     

Bounded rationality and cognitive development: Upper limits on growth?

Piaget's characterization of formal operational thought and human judgment psychologists' model of bounded rationality are considered as two conflicting models dealing with the same domain of interest: the nature and limits of mature thought. Piaget's suggestion that the formal operational thinker brings the skills of hypothetico-deductive logic to deal adequately with environmental complexity is in sharp contrast with judgment psychologists' evidence that information-processing limitations and faulty reasoning leave decision makers poorly equipped to deal with their decision environments. While the two approaches have generated conflicting models, a look at the respective data bases demonstrates their complementarity. Considered together, the literatures in formal operations and bounded rationality make a formidable contribution to understanding the capacities and limits of mature cognition.     

Constraints on retrieval search for episodic information in children and adults

The hypothesis that a lack of structural constraint limits children's ability to use context and category cues to search associative memory for episodic information is examined in this study. Second and fifth graders and college adults were shown word triplets at acquisition and asked to recall the final target member of each triplet in a cued recall task. The manipulations concerned sources of associative structure that could constrain retrieval search. The degree to which the members of the triplets were associated was varied, as well as the kind of association, and the kind and amount of retrieval support provided in the cue, and encoding was constrained by orienting questions or was unconstrained. The results showed that children's effective use of retrieval cues was more dependent on episodic associative structure, retrieval support, and the constrained encoding of associative information than was adults'. Differences in the associative structure of information in permanent memory seemed to contribute to the results.     

Assessment of children's social skills

Various methods of social skills assessment with children were reviewed. Based upon an extensive review of the literature, it was found that behavioral observations, sociometrics, and teacher ratings have been the most often used methods of assessing children's social skill deficits. Advantages and disadvantages of each assessment technique were discussed within a psychometric and social validation context. Conclusions were that school psychologists should utilized all three measures to secure a comprehensive picture of children's social behavior and to obtain some measure of social validation.     

Classical conditioning of the rabbit's nictitating membrane response under fixed and mixed CS-US intervals

The rabbit's nictitating membrane response was classically conditioned to a tone CS, followed by an electric shock US, at two randomly alternating CS-US interstimulus intervals (ISIs). Different groups were exposed to different proportions of 200- and 700-msec ISIs. The study revealed: (a) CR percentage was a direct function of the proportion of 200-msec ISIs; (b) trials to the first test-trial CR were an inverse function of the proportion of 200-msec ISIs; (c) CR onset latencies decreased over training; (d) CR peak latencies coincided with the temporal loci of the US; and (e) groups exposed to both ISIs acquired double-peaked CRs. Moreover, the amplitudes of nictitating membrane responses in the present experiment paralleled certain quantitative aspects of the free operant key peck response rates of pigeons trained under two mixed inter-reinforcement intervals. The results were discussed with respect to the micromolar response shaping and macromolecular CS-trace accounts of classical conditioning.     

The value of being imitated

Theories and research on the topics of attraction, conformity, and imitation support the view that the relational stimulus arising from being imitated serves a reinforcing function. To examine this possibility, 48 preschool children performed a task in which some neutral stimuli were repeatedly associated with an adult's matching the behavior of the subject, and other neutral stimuli were associated with the same adult's mismatching the behavior of the subject. Preference for the stimuli associated with being matched was greater at the end of training than earlier, and the overall preference for the matched stimuli exceeded chance. The results are considered in terms of the thesis that similarity arising from being imitated served a reinforcing function and the thesis that response strategies were adopted by the children.     

At the boundaries of automaticity: negation as reflective operation

The present research investigated whether automatic social-cognitive skills are based on the same representations and processes as their controlled counterparts. Using the cognitive task of negating valence, the authors demonstrate that enhanced practice in negating the valence of a stimulus can lead to changes in the underlying associative representation. However, procedural, rule-based components of negations were generally unaffected by practice (Experiments 1-3). Moreover, negations of evaluative stimuli did not influence automatic evaluative responses to these stimuli, unless the negation was included in the associative representation of a stimulus (Experiments 4-6). These results suggest that some practice-related skill improvements are limited to conditions in which a general procedure can be substituted by the retrieval of results of previous applications from associative memory. Implications for research on automaticity and social cognition are discussed.     

Effective list length and part-whole transfer in first-graders' multitrial free recall

First-gradens' multitrial free recall shows an effective list-length (ELL) effect: an initial recall gain followed by a constant output level that fluctuates in item content. The part-whole transfer paradigm was used to investigate ELL. The ELL effect occurred in whole-list learning regardless of whether the prior task consisted of relevant practice, irrelevant practice, or an unrelated task. Relevant part-list learning resulted in positive transfer which declined from a high to a marginal level over the course of whole-list learning. Other analyses indicated a general deficit in the use of strategies. A response-strength model was used to explain the ELL effect and the transfer results.     

The effects of stimulus type,training, and chronological age on children's identification and recoding of multidimensional stimuli

Kindergarten and second-grade children (75 and 99 months of age, respectively) were first taught that the two stimuli within each of four pairs of multidimentional stimuli differed with respect to their values on every one of three bivalued dimensions: color, size, and form. Each of the eight stimuli was then presented twice, one at a time, and the child was asked either to find its duplicate (eight encoding trials) or to find its complementary mate (eight recoding trials) among the complete set of eight stimuli. Next, each of the eight stimulus compounds was presented twice as a display stimulus for 5 sec and, after a delay of 10 to 15 sec, the child was asked to find the display stimulus (eight trials of encoding plus memory) or its complement (eight trials of recoding plus memory) among the complete set. The stimuli for half the children in each age group were standard unitary compounds (e.g., a large red circle, a small blue square, etc.) and for the other half they were partitioned stimuli with their dimensional values spatially separated (e.g., large arrow, circle outline, and patch of color). Half of the children in each of these subgroups were given a basic pretraining, and the other half received extended pretraining, in recoding the stimulus attributes. The results indicated that unitary stimuli were easier to encode but the partitioned stimuli were easier to recode, that recoding was much more difficult than encoding, that extended training improved recoding performance, and that second graders were slightly better at encoding and much better at recoding than the kindergarten children. The patterns of performance on the tasks involving memory were similar to those just described. The results were discussed in terms of children's abilities to analyze multidimensional stimuli into their dimensional components.     

Individual differences in the acquisition of non‐linguistic audio‐visual associations in 5 year olds

Audio‐visual associative learning – at least when linguistic stimuli are employed – is known to rely on core linguistic skills such as phonological awareness. Here we ask whether this would also be the case in a task that does not manipulate linguistic information. Another question of interest is whether executive skills, often found to support learning, may play a larger role in a non‐linguistic audio‐visual associative task compared to a linguistic one. We present a new task that measures learning when having to associate non‐linguistic auditory signals with novel visual shapes. Importantly, our novel task shares with linguistic processes such as reading acquisition the need to associate sounds with arbitrary shapes. Yet, rather than phonemes or syllables, it uses novel environmental sounds – therefore limiting direct reliance on linguistic abilities. Five‐year‐old French‐speaking children (N = 76, 39 girls) were assessed individually in our novel audio‐visual associative task, as well as in a number of other cognitive tasks evaluating linguistic abilities and executive functions. We found phonological awareness and language comprehension to be related to scores in the audio‐visual associative task, while no correlation with executive functions was observed. These results underscore a key relation between foundational language competencies and audio‐visual associative learning, even in the absence of linguistic input in the associative task.     

The establishment of flavor-flavor associations using a sensory preconditioning training procedure

In Experiment 1, rats drank two distinct flavors in sequence during preconditioning; during training, the second of these flavors was paired with a toxin. During testing, there was an aversion to the flavor not directly paired with the toxin. In Experiment 2, the time interval between the two flavors (0, 3, 9, and 27 sec) in the preconditioning phase was varied; learning occurred only if the flavors were separated by 9 sec or less. Experiment 3, using a 60-sec interstimulus interval also did not reveal learning. These results reveal that the temporal gradient for flavor-flavor associative learning is similar to conventional audio-visual sensory preconditioning delay gradients and different from those obtained in flavor-toxicosis experiments. The results are discussed in terms of their critical implication for Revusky's concurrent interference theory of associative learning.     

Analyzing the random control procedure: Effects of paired and unpaired CSs and USs on autoshaping the chick's key peck with heat reinforcement

A series of five experiments using a total of 264 subjects investigated the effects of paired and unpaired key light (CS) and heat (US) stimuli on autoshaping the chick's key peck. Experiment 1 established that paired presentations of CS and US promoted a more rapid rise in key pecking than did randomly presented CSs and USs and that the specific sequence of stimuli under the random control procedure affected key pecking performance. Experiment 2 used a trace conditioning procedure to determine the role of the CS-US interval on autoshaping and to define empirically unpaired CSs and USs. Key pecking declined as the trace delay interval was increased from 0 to 25 sec; at 25 sec, no conditioning of key pecking occurred. Experiments 3–5 assessed the effects on autoshaped key pecking of (a) number of daily CS-US pairings, (b) added unpaired CS presentations, and (c) added unpaired US presentations, since paired and random control schedules differed in all of these respects. Reduction in the number of CS-US pairings slowed the acquisition of key pecking as did the concurrent addition of nonreinforced CSs and unsignaled USs. These results support theories of association formation that stress the effects of both paired and unpaired CSs and USs.     

Types produce types: An examination of personality development using Holland's theory

This study was designed to test Holland's hypothesis that parents encourage the development of their own personality types in their offspring. Data were collected by personal interviews from three freshmen classes at a large midwestern university. Parent's personality types (occupations) were compared to offsprings' personality types (expressed occupational choices) using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov one-sample test to determine whether or not the comparisons were due to chance. The results indicated that relationships existed between the personality types of fathers-sons, fathers-daughters and mothers-daughters while no relationship was confirmed between mothers-sons.     

联想启动与知觉启动的比较研究

采用快速命名方法探讨不同加工水平对联想启动效应的影响。被试分别在深、浅加工条件下学习一系列颜色词,然后完成颜色命名和再认任务,并设立词命名任务,以比较联想启动和知觉启动的异同。结果表明,在颜色命名任务中,深、浅加工条件下均可形成对颜色词的启动效应,但浅加工条件下的再认成绩明显低于深加工,出现了联想启动和再认的分离现象。词命名表现出与颜色命名相似的结果,但它们在有意识回忆方面仍存在一定的差异,提示知觉表征系统单独并不能支持联想启动,联想启动可能是多个记忆系统共同作用的结果。     

The influence of introversion/extraversion on the skin conductance response to stress and stimulus intensity

A series of studies compared skin conductance level (SCL) for introverts and extraverts during a series of tones varying in both stimulus intensity (SI) and the amount of stress preceding the tones. When a difficult paired-associate task preceded the tones, both groups were about the same for 83 dB tones but extraverts were much higher at 103 dB, introverts failing to show an increase as a function of SI. There were no differences between the two groups following a simple paired-associate task, both groups showing a similar increase with increased SI. Finally, SCL was higher for introverts than extraverts during tones preceded by a rest period, and this was especially true for the early trials and for lower SI (75 and 83 dB compared with 100 and 103 dB). Taken together, these results suggest that SCL is higher for extraverts at higher levels of arousal but that the reverse is true for lower levels of arousal. This relationship is consistent with the theory that introverts have a “weak nervous system” which develops transmarginal or protective inhibition under stress.     

The recall and use of traits and events in social inference processes

Social inference research needs to more closely examine the kinds of information people actually have available for making social judgments. It is assumed here that the observation of behavioral events results in encoding and storage of both a relatively raw event record and of higher level encodings, such as trait inferences. Several specific hypotheses are advanced concerning the effects of higher level encodings on event recall, and the effects of encoding and memory processes on subsequent judgments about a stimulus person. Consistent with hypotheses, results indicate that higher level encodings do affect recall for stimulus information and do affect judgments of the stimulus person. The possibility that higher level encodings affect judgments solely by introducing bias into recall for the episodic record is considered and discarded in favor of the interpretation that higher level encodings are actually recalled and used in inference processes.