Of two minds or one? A registered replication of Rydell et al. (2006)

ABSTRACT

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is proposed as a mechanism of automatic preference acquisition in dual-process theories of attitudes (Gawronski, B., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin, 132(5), 692–731. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.5.692). Evidence for the automaticity of EC comes from studies claiming EC effects for subliminally presented stimuli. An impression-formation study showed a selective influence of briefly presented primes on implicitly measured attitudes, whereas supraliminally presented behavioural information about the target person was reflected in explicit ratings (Rydell, R. J., McConnell, A. R., Mackie, D. M., & Strain, L. M. (2006). Of two minds forming and changing valence-inconsistent implicit and explicit attitudes. Psychological Science, 17(11), 954–958. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01811.x) This finding is considered one of the strongest pieces of evidence for dual process theories (Sweldens, S., Corneille, O., & Yzerbyt, V. (2014). The role of awareness in attitude formation through evaluative conditioning. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(2), 187–209. doi:10.1177/1088868314527832), and it is therefore crucial to assess its reliability and robustness. The present study presents two registered replications of the Rydell et al. (2006) study. In contrast to the original findings, the implicit measures did not reflect the valence of the subliminal primes in both studies.     

Targeting avoidance via compound extinction

ABSTRACT

Avoidance towards innocuous cues is a key diagnostic criterion across anxiety-related disorders. Importantly, the most effective intervention for anxiety-related disorders, exposure therapy with response prevention, sometimes does not prevent the relapse of anxiety's symptomatology. We tested whether extinction effects, the experimental proxy of exposure, are enhanced by increasing the discrepancy between the prediction of an unpleasant event happening (shock presentation), and the actual event (shock omission). Forty-eight individuals first saw pictures of three stimuli. Two pictures (CSA, CSB) were followed by a shock (US) and one (CS-) was not. Next, participants learned to avoid the US by pressing a computer key. An extinction and response prevention procedure followed. In the first part of it, participants saw unreinforced presentations of all CSs. In the second part, the single group saw unreinforced presentations of the CSA and CS-. The compound group encountered compound unreinforced presentations of the CSA and CSB, and separate presentations of the CS-. Return of avoidance and fear was tested after unsignalled presentations of the US. Compound extinction resulted in comparable reduction of fear and avoidance compared to standard extinction. We discuss how future research could enhance extinction effects by adding costs to the avoidance behaviour.     

What you see is what will change: Evaluative conditioning effects depend on a focus on valence

This study investigated whether evaluative conditioning (EC) effects depend on an evaluative focus during the learning phase. An EC effect is a valence change of an originally neutral stimulus (conditioned stimulus or CS) that is due to the former pairing with a positive or negative stimulus (unconditioned stimulus or US). In three experiments, the task focus during the conditioning phase was manipulated. Participants judged CS–US pairings either with respect to their valence or with respect to another stimulus dimension. EC effects on explicit and implicit measures were found when valence was task relevant but not when the non-valent stimulus dimension was task relevant. Two accounts for the valence focus effect are proposed: (1) An additional direct learning of the relation of CS and evaluative responses in the valence focus condition, or (2) a stronger activation of US valence in the valence focus condition compared to the non-valent focus condition.     

The effect of evaluation on co-occurrence memory judgement

Three experiments tested the effect of an attitude towards an object on the memory judgement of whether this object co-occurred with positive versus negative stimuli. We induced positive or negative attitudes towards novel male stimuli, and paired each man with an equal number of positive and negative animals. In a memory test, participants reported more co-occurrences of same-valence man/animal pairs than opposite-valence pairs. This valence-compatibility effect occurred even when attitudes were induced after the pairing (Experiment 1), when participants knew that each man occurred with an equal number of positive and negative animals (Experiment 2), and in reports of clear memory of pairs that did not co-occur (Experiment 3). The present findings suggest that evaluation causes illusory correlation even when the co-occurring stimuli are not traits or behaviours attributed to the attitude object. The results question the validity of co-occurrence memory judgements as measures of co-occurrence awareness in evaluative conditioning (EC) research.     

Attribute conditioning: Changing attribute-assessments through mere pairings

We propose Attribute Conditioning (AC) as a form of learning that refers to changes in people's assessment of stimuli's (CSs) attributes due to repeated pairing with stimuli possessing these attributes (USs). We review the available evidence and, based on this review, delineate three open questions and investigate them experimentally: a) the moderating role of CS-US similarity; b) the possibility of blocking; and c) the possibility of extinction. Five experiments conditioned health and athleticism. We measured AC effects on direct and indirect dependent variables (direct ratings and semantic misattribution). Experiment 1 shows that CS-US feature similarity does not moderate AC. Experiments 2 and 3 show that AC effects are insensitive to blocking; and Experiments 4 and 5 show that AC effects are resistant to extinction. These five experiments show that AC depends on CS-US contiguity, but not on CS-US contingency. Thereby, the study establishes AC as a simple learning phenomenon describing how people, stimuli, and concepts acquire specific attributes in people's minds due to mere pairings.     

A Psychometric Comparison of Narcotic Addicts With Hospital Attendants

This study sought to determine the effect of a single intraperitoneal injection of methylchloroethamine on the long-term activity response of immature, male, Holtzmann albino rats. The 10 experimental Ss showed a significant progressive decline in activity up to 110 days after injection. The activity of the control Ss over the same period showed random variation. A subsidiary finding was a significantly faster weight gain for the experimental Ss than for the control Ss.     

The role of response inhibition in temporal preparation: Evidence from a go/no-go task

During the foreperiod (FP) of a warned reaction task, participants engage in a process of temporal preparation to speed response to the impending target stimulus. Previous neurophysiological studies have shown that inhibition is applied during FP to prevent premature response. Previous behavioral studies have shown that the duration of FP on both the current and the preceding trial codetermine response time to the target. Integrating these findings, the present study tested the hypothesis that the behavioral effects find their origin in response inhibition on the preceding trial. In two experiments the variable-FP paradigm was combined with a go/no-go task, in which no-go stimuli required explicit response inhibition. The resulting data pattern revealed sequential effects of both FP (long or short) and response requirement (go or no-go), which could be jointly understood as expressions of response inhibition, consistent with the hypothesis.     

Shaking That Icky Feeling: Effects of Extinction and Counterconditioning on Disgust-Related Evaluative Learning

Learned disgust appears to play an important role in certain anxiety disorders, and can be explained by the process of evaluative conditioning, in which an affective evaluative reaction evoked by an unconditional stimulus (US) is transferred to a conditional stimulus (CS). Much remains unknown about how disgust-related evaluative learning can be effectively eliminated. Study 1 of the present investigation examined the effects of extinction on reducing the negative evaluation of a CS that was acquired during disgust conditioning. Participants completed acquisition trials, with a disgusting picture as US and two neutral pictures as CS (CS + was paired with the US; CS- was unpaired), followed by extinction trials ("CS only"; experimental condition) or a filler task (control condition). Extinction trials reduced acquired US expectancy to the CS +, but did not extinguish negative evaluations of the CS +. Study 2 examined the effects of counterconditioning on evaluative learned disgust. After disgust acquisition trials, counterconditioning trials followed in which the CS + was paired with a pleasant US (experimental condition) or a filler task (control condition). Counterconditioning trials reduced acquired US expectancy to the CS + and reduced evaluative conditioned disgust. Implications of the potential differential effects of extinction and counterconditioning on evaluative learning for exposure-based treatment of specific anxiety disorders are discussed.     

Signaled alternative reinforcement and the persistence of operant behavior

Differential reinforcement of alternative behavior (DRA) is a treatment designed to eliminate problem behavior by reinforcing an alternative behavior at a higher rate. Availability of alternative reinforcement may be signaled, as with Functional Communication Training, or unsignaled. Whether or not alternative reinforcement is signaled could influence both the rate and persistence of problem behavior. The present study investigated whether signaling the availability of alternative reinforcement affects the rate and persistence of a concurrently available target response with pigeons. Three components of a multiple concurrent schedule arranged equal reinforcement rates for target responding. Two of the components also arranged equal reinforcement rates for an alternative response. In one DRA component, a discrete stimulus signaled the availability of response‐contingent alternative reinforcement by changing the keylight color upon reinforcement availability. In the other DRA component, availability of alternative reinforcement was not signaled. Target responding was most persistent in the unsignaled DRA component when disrupted by satiation, free food presented between components, and extinction, relative to the signaled DRA and control components. These findings suggest the discrete stimulus functionally separated the availability of alternative reinforcement from the discriminative stimuli governing target responding. These findings provide a novel avenue to explore in translational research assessing whether signaling the availability of alternative reinforcement with DRA treatments reduces the persistence of problem behavior.     

Effects of multiple contexts and context similarity on the renewal of extinguished conditioned behaviour in an ABA design with humans

The ABA renewal procedure involves pairing a conditional stimulus (CS) and an unconditional stimulus (US) in one context (A), presenting extinction trials of the CS alone in a second context (B), and nonreinforced test trials of the CS in the acquisition context (A). The renewal of extinguished conditioned behaviour is observed during test. The current study tested the effects of multiple extinction contexts and context similarity in attenuating renewal. Participants (N = 99) took part in a fear conditioning ABA renewal procedure. Using a measure of self-reported expectancy of the US, ABA renewal was observed when a single extinction context that was dissimilar to the test context was used. Renewal was attenuated, though still present, when extinction occurred in multiple dissimilar extinction contexts or in a single extinction context that was similar to the test context. Renewal was completely abolished when multiple extinction contexts that were similar to the test context were combined. Multiple extinction contexts and context similarity act additively in their effect on attenuating renewal. The results are discussed in relation to the design of exposure therapy programs that seek to reduce relapse that can occur via renewal.