Extinction induced representational change.

Extinction may alter the representation of a cue (e.g., it becomes less salient).

Perceived stress and renewal: The effects of long-term stress on the renewal effect.

Two online experiments evaluated the relationship between long-term stress, as measured with the Perceived Stress Scale-10, and the Renewal Effect. In the first experiment renewal was assessed with a behavioral suppression task in a science-fiction based video game. Participants learned to suppress mouse clicking during a signal for an upcoming attack to avoid losing points.

Latent inhibition in humans from simple stimulus exposure.

Two experiments observed an effect consistent with a latent-inhibition (LI) effect in humans that (a) did not depend on masking or instruction-generated expectations and (b) suggested that the effect results from a change in processing of the predictive cue. Participants viewed a video of a superhero character flying through three different contexts past a different stimulus in each context. In conditioning, The superhero flew past a target cue that was either Novel (Group No Exposure), had been preexposed in the Same context as where conditioning was occurring (Group Same), or was preexposed in a Different context (Group Different).

The effects of stimulus pre-exposure and conditioning on overt visual attention.

Three experiments (a, b, c) combined to provide a well-powered examination of the effects of stimulus pre-exposure and conditioning on visual attention using an eye tracker and a space-shooter video game where a colored flashing light predicted an attacking spaceship. In each, group "control" received no pre-exposure to the light, group "same" received pre-exposure in the same context as conditioning, and group "different" received pre-exposure in a different context. Experiments differed in visual details regarding the game (1a vs.

Response reduction and stimulus pre-exposure effects in a human conditioning method.

Two experiments with humans determined whether reduced conditioning following pre-exposure to the conditioned stimulus could be explained by conditioned inhibition (Experiment 1 [E1]) or extinction of responding that the conditioned stimulus (CS) might elicit during pre-exposure (Experiment 2 [E2]). In a video game task (Nelson et al., 2014), participants learned to respond to lights that signaled attacking spaceships.

Extinction contexts fail to transfer control: Implications for conditioned inhibition and occasion-setting accounts of renewal.

The renewal effect is often explained as a side effect of the extinction context acting as a negative occasion setter. Four experiments tested whether extinction contexts show the selective-transfer property of occasion setters. Experiments 1-3 used a predictive judgment task where participants rated the probability of certain foods (cues) producing gastric malaise (outcomes) in different restaurants (contexts).

Intensity effects in human cue-outcome learning.

Literature on conditioned stimulus intensity effects is briefly reviewed and one experiment presented with human subjects and a video-game method. The intensity (Bright or Dim) or color (Red or Blue) of a cue that predicted the appearance of a spaceship was manipulated. Testing was conducted with either the alternate brightness or the alternate color.

Prior extinction increases acquisition context specificity in human predictive learning.

One experiment evaluated the effect of extinction on the context dependence of non-extinguished information in a situation in which physical (images), rather than predominantly verbal, contexts were used in human predictive learning. Participants received training in which different foods (Cues) were associated with the presence or the absence of gastric illness (outcome) in customers of different restaurants (contexts). One cue was associated with the gastric illness while a different cue was either extinguished or not between groups.

Reversal training facilitates acquisition of new learning in a Morris water maze.

Two experiments determined the effect of interference training on subsequent spatial learning in a Morris water maze. Rats first learned that a platform was located in a quadrant marked by landmarks A and B. Different groups of rats either continued or reversed that training.

Conditioned anticipatory outcome searching in humans.

Two experiments used eye tracking to examine visual searching for expected outcomes in humans during an associative-learning task. In both, participants learned to press keys on a keyboard to activate weapons to repel invading spaceships in the presence of predictive "sensors." In both experiments, eye tracking showed that participants came to direct their overt visual attention to the portions of the screen where the spaceship would arrive during the presentation of the sensor in a cue-specific manner.

Learning to learn in conditioning and extinction in humans.

Learning to Learn (LTL) is the transfer of learning, separate from stimulus generalization, that appears across tasks that share a similar structure. Three experiments examined this phenomenon in both conditioning and extinction learning in humans. The latter effect is of special interest given the failures in the literature to obtain transfer of extinction between stimuli.

The effects of extinction-aroused attention on context conditioning.

Two experiments assessed the effects of extinguishing a conditioned cue on subsequent context conditioning. Each experiment used a different video-game method where sensors predicted attacking spaceships and participants responded to the sensor in a way that prepared them for the upcoming attack. In Experiment 1 extinction of a cue which signaled a spaceship-attack outcome facilitated subsequent learning when the attack occurred unsignaled.

Recovery of attention with renewal.

One experiment determined the relationship between renewed associative strength and attention. Following cue1-outcome pairings in Context A, cue1 was extinguished in Context B while cue2 was conditioned. On test cue2 was chosen as a predictor of the outcome in Context B.

Ambiguity produces attention shifts in category learning.

It has been suggested that people and nonhuman animals protect their knowledge from interference by shifting attention toward the context when presented with information that contradicts their previous beliefs. Despite that suggestion, no studies have directly measured changes in attention while participants are exposed to an interference treatment. In the present experiments, we adapted a dot-probe task to track participants' attention to cues and contexts while they were completing a simple category learning task.

Contextual control of conditioning is not affected by extinction in a behavioral task with humans.

The Attentional Theory of Context Processing (ATCP) states that extinction will arouse attention to contexts resulting in learning becoming contextually controlled. Participants learned to suppress responding to colored sensors in a video-game task where contexts were provided by different gameplay backgrounds. Four experiments assessed the contextual control of simple excitatory learning acquired to a test stimulus (T) after (Exp.

Integration of multiple memories in sensory preconditioning.

The present study demonstrates that humans' response to a single stimulus (S1) is determined by what follows S1's associates. The experiment used a sensory preconditioning (SPC) design where S1 was associated with both S2 and S3 on separate trials before establishing relationships between these latter stimuli with an outcome or its absence in a second phase. When S2 and S3 were associated with the same consequence, either an outcome or its absence, strong consequence-based responding to S1 was observed in a reaction time test.

An easy-to-hard effect after nonreinforced preexposure in a sweetness discrimination.

Experiments 1A and 1B used a taste-aversion procedure with rats to demonstrate that exposure to easily discriminated flavors along a dimension (1 % and 10 % sucrose) can facilitate learning a subsequent hard discrimination (4 % and 7 % sucrose) when one of those flavors is paired with illness. Experiment 1A compared the effects of preexposure to the easily discriminated flavors against exposure to the same stimuli used in the discrimination training or no exposure at all. Experiment 1B replicated the conditions in Experiment 1A, with 2 additional days of training and unrestricted access to the flavors on CS+/CS- trials in discrimination training.

Presentation and validation of "The Learning Game," a tool to study associative learning in humans.

This article presents a 3-D science-fiction-based videogame method to study learning, and two experiments that we used to validate it. In this method, participants are first trained to respond to enemy spaceships (Stimulus 2, or S2) with particular keypresses, followed by transport to a new context (galaxy), where other manipulations can occur. During conditioning, colored flashing lights (Stimulus 1, or S1) can predict S2, and the response attached to S2 from the prior phase comes to be evoked by S1.

Extinction produces context inhibition and multiple-context extinction reduces response recovery in human predictive learning.

Two experiments with human participants were used to investigate recovery of an extinguished learned response after a context change using ABC designs. In an ABC design, the context changes over the three successive stages of acquisition (context A), extinction (context B), and test (context C). In both experiments, we found reduced recovery in groups that had extinction in multiple contexts, and that the extinction contexts acquired inhibitory strength.

Extinction arouses attention to the context in a behavioral suppression method with humans.

One experiment assessed predictions from the attentional theory of context processing (ATCP, J. M. Rosas, J.

The extinction context enables extinction performance after a change in context.

One experiment with human participants determined the extent to which recovery of extinguished responding with a context switch was due to a failure to retrieve contextually controlled learning, or some other process such as participants learning that context changes signal reversals in the meaning of stimulus-outcome relationships. In a video game, participants learned to suppress mouse clicking in the presence of a stimulus that predicted an attack. Then, that stimulus underwent extinction in a different context (environment within the game).

Concurrent extinction does not render appetitive conditioning context specific.

In an experiment with rats, an appetitive conditioning method was used to investigate the generality of the hypothesis that extinction should arouse attention to contextual cues, resulting in all learning in that context becoming context specific. Rats received appetitive conditioning with a tone either while extinction of a flasher occurred (Group With Extinction) or while it did not (Group No Extinction). Half of each group was subsequently tested in extinction in the context in which training had taken place or in a different context.

Experimental renewal in human participants.

Two experiments with human participants are presented that differentiate renewal from other behavioral effects that can produce a response after extinction. Participants played a video game and learned to suppress their behavior when sensor stimuli predicted an attack. Contexts (A, B, & C) were provided by fictitious galaxies where the game play took place.

Contextual control of first- and second-learned excitation and inhibition in equally ambiguous stimuli.

In two three-phase experiments, rats received a final third excitatory (Experiment 1) or inhibitory (Experiment 2) phase of conditioning with a tone. The third phase came immediately prior to a test with the tone, either in the context where the tone was trained or in a different context. Groups differed in each experiment with respect to the first two phases.