Conditioned place preferences in humans using secondary reinforcers.

The goal of this experiment was to examine whether a conditioned place preference could be established in humans using a secondary reinforcer that provided little obvious reward to the participants. Two experiments were conducted to answer this question. In Experiment 1, 244 undergraduates were placed into a VR environment consisting of two visually distinct rooms connected by a door.

Pavlovian conditioning to food reward as a function of eating disorder risk.

The aim of this experiment was to examine the extent to which eating disorder risk affects the strength of food-reward conditioning. Eighty food-restricted undergraduates were placed into a VR environment consisting of two visually distinct rooms. Participants underwent multiple pairing sessions in which they were confined into one of the two rooms and explored a VR environment.

Conditioned place preferences in humans using virtual reality.

To extend a standard paradigm of conditioning in nonhumans to humans, we created a virtual reality (VR) conditioned place preference task, with real-life food rewards. Undergraduates were placed into a VR environment consisting of 2 visually distinct rooms. On Day 1, participants underwent 6 pairing sessions in which they were confined into one of the two rooms and explored the VR environment.