Four experiments investigated inhibition that might arise in a task in which cues are associated with more than one outcome. In each experiment, human subjects played a game called “Clues and Culprits” in which they were asked to judge the predictive strength of clues that had been associated with culprits in a series of hypothetical crimes. In a two-outcome version of the familiar conditioned inhibition paradigm (A+, AX-), one clue was paired with one culprit on its own, but it was paired with a second culprit when it was combined with a second clue (A-1, AX-2). According to the delta rule, X should acquire inhibition for the first culprit; it should also acquire more inhibition than a differential cue merely associated with a second culprit (e.g. A-1, X-2). Inhibition was found with both procedures. However, the amount of inhibition did not differ between them, suggesting that mere association with a second outcome was sufficient to inhibit performance based on the first. Other data suggested the presence of cue competition. Also, when a cue associated with one culprit was paired with a second culprit on other trials, there was little evidence of unlearning of the first association.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AllenL. G. (1980). A note on measurement of contingency between two binary variables in judgment tasks.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society15, 147–149.
2.
AndersonM. C.BjorkR. A. (1994). Mechanisms of inhibition in long-term memory.Inhibitory processes in attention, memory, and language.DagenbachD.CarrT. H.San Diego, CA: Academic Press265–325.
3.
BakerA. G.MercierP.Vallée-TourangeauF.FrankR.PanM. (1993). Selective associations and causality judgments: The presence of a strong factor may reduce judgments of a weaker one.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition19, 414–432.
4.
BakerA. G.MurphyR. A.Valleé-TourangeauF.Associative and normative models of causal induction: Reacting to versus understanding cause.The psychology of learning and motivation.MedinD. L.San Diego, CA: Academic Pressin press.
5.
BoutonM. E. (1991). Context and retrieval in extinction and in other examples of interference in simple associative learning.Current topics in animal learning: Brain, emotion, and cognition.DachowskiL.FlahertyC. F.Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.25–53.
6.
BoutonM. E. (1993). Context, time, and memory retrieval in the interference paradigms of Pavlovian learning.Psychological Bulletin80–99.
7.
BoutonM. E.NelsonJ. B. (1994). Context-specificity of inhibition to the target versus the feature in a feature-negative discrimination.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes20, 51–65.
8.
BoutonM. E.PeckC. A. (1992). Spontaneous recovery in cross-motivational transfer (counter-conditioning).Animal Learning and Behavior20, 313–321.
9.
ChapmanG. B. (1991). Trial order affects cue interaction in contingency judgment.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition17, 837–854.
10.
ChapmanG. B.RobbinsS. J. (1990). Cue interaction in human contingency judgment.Memory and Cognition18, 537–545.
11.
DickinsonA.ShanksS.EvendenJ. (1984). Judgment of act-outcome contingency: The role of selective attribution.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology36A, 29–50.
12.
GluckM. A.BowerG. H. (1988). From conditioning to category learning: An adaptive network model.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General117, 227–247.
13.
HoffmanJ. W.FitzgeraldR. D. (1982). Bidirectional heart rate responses in rats as sociated with excitatory and inhibitory stimuli.Animal Learning and Behavior10, 77–82.
14.
KaminL. J. (1969). Predictability, surprise, attention and conditioning.Punishment and aversive behavior.CampbellB. A.ChurchR. M.New York: Appleton-Century Crofts279–296.
15.
KonorskiJ. (1967). Integrity of the brain: An interdisciplinary approachChicago, IL: University Chicago Press.
16.
MackintoshN. J. (1975). A theory of attention: Variations in the associability of stimuli with reinforcement.Psychological Review4, 276–298.
17.
MahoneyW. J.KwaterskiS. E.MooreJ. W. (1975). Conditioned inhibition of the rabbit nictitating membrane response as a function of CS-US interval.Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society5, 177–179.
18.
MarchantH. G.IIIMooreJ. W. (1974). Below-zero conditioned inhibition of the rabbit's nictitating membrane response.Journal of Experimental Psychology102, 350–352.
19.
MarkmanA. B. (1989). LMS rules and the inverse base-rate effect: Comment on Gluck and Bower (1988).Journal of Experimental Psychology: General118, 417–421.
20.
MedinD. L.EdelsonS. M. (1988). Problem structure and the use of base-rate information from experience.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General117, 68–85.
21.
MedinD. L.SchafferM. (1978). Context theory of classification learning.Psychological Review85, 207–238.
22.
MelzE. R.ChengP. W.HolyoakK. J.WaldmannM. R. (1993). Cue competition in human categorization: Contingency or the Rescorla-Wagner learning rule? Comments on Shanks (1991).Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition19, 1398–1410.
23.
PavlovI. P. (1927). Conditioned reflexesOxford: Oxford University Press.
24.
PearceJ. M. (1987). A model for stimulus generalization in Pavlovian conditioning.Psychological Review94, 61–73.
25.
PeckC. A.BoutonM. E. (1990). Context and performance in aversive-to-appetitive and appetitive-to-aversive transfer.Learning and Motivation21, 1–31.
26.
RescorlaR. A. (1969). Pavlovian conditioned inhibition.Psychological Bulletin72, 77–94.
27.
RescorlaR. A.DurlachP. J. (1981). Within-event learning in Pavlovian conditioning.Information processing in animals: Memory mechanisms.SpearN. E.MillerR. R.Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.81–111.
28.
RescorlaR. A.HollandP. C. (1977). Associations in Pavlovian conditioned inhibition.Learning and Motivation8, 429–447.
29.
RescorlaR. A.LoLordoV. M. (1965). Inhibition of avoidance behavior.Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology59, 406–412.
30.
RescorlaR. A.WagnerA. R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and non-reinforcement.Classical conditioning II: Current theory and research.BlackA. H.ProkasyW. F.New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts64–99.
31.
ShanksD. R. (1986). Selective attribution and the judgment of causality.Learning and Motivation17, 311–334.
32.
ShanksD. R. (1991). Categorization by a connectionist network.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition17, 433–443.
33.
ShanksD. R. (1993). Associative versus contingency accounts of category learning: Reply to Melz, Cheng, Holyoak, and Waldmann (1993).Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition19, 1411–1423.
34.
TassoniC. J. (1995). The least mean squares network with information coding: A model of cue learning.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition21, 193–204.
35.
WassermanE. A. (1990). Attribution of causality to common and distinctive elements of compound stimuli.Psychological Science1, 298–302.
36.
WeismanR. G.LitnerJ. S. (1969). The course of Pavlovia n excitation and inhibition of fear in rats.Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology69, 667–672.
37.
WilliamsD. A. (1995). Forms of inhibition in animal and human learning.Journal of Experimental Psychology21, 129–142.
