Context switch effects on acquisition and extinction in human predictive learning

Four experiments tested context switch effects on acquisition and extinction in human predictive learning. A context switch impaired probability judgments about a cue-outcome relationship when the cue was trained in a context in which a different cue underwent extinction. The context switch also impaired judgments about a cue trained in a context different from the extinction context, whenever this training was concurrent with extinction of another cue. After extinction, new cue-outcome relationships learned, even in a different task, became context specific. Moreover, renewal was consistently observed. It is suggested that context switch effects result from a process by which ambiguity leads participants to attend to the contexts.