An Extended Comparator Hypothesis Account of Superconditioning.

Urushihara, Kouji; Wheeler, Daniel S.; Pineño, Oskar; Miller, Ralph R.

doi:10.1037/0097-7403.31.2.184

Cited by 16 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Additionally, these data support the view that animals encode more than simple CS-US association in cue interaction situations. They are consistent with recent data from our laboratory that suggested an important role for higher-order associative chains in determining the response potential of a CS (e.g., Urushihara et al, 2005; Witnauer, Urcelay, & Miller, 2008). More generally, the present observations suggest that the prevailing emphasis on information processing at the time of acquisition to the exclusion of subsequent information processing, particularly at the time of testing, is misdirected.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Protection from latent inhibition provided by a conditioned inhibitor.

McConnell

Wheeler

Urcelay

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

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Two conditioned suppression experiments with rats investigated the influence on latent inhibition of compounding a Pavlovian conditioned inhibitor with the target cue during preexposure treatment.Results were compared to subjects that received conventional latent inhibition training, no preexposure, or preexposure to the target cue in compound with a neutral stimulus. In Experiment 1, greater attenuation of the latent inhibition effect was observed in subjects that received target preexposure in compound with a Pavlovian conditioned inhibitor relative to subjects that received preexposure with a neutral stimulus or to the target alone. In Experiment 2, this protection from latent inhibition was attenuated if the excitor that was used to train the conditioned inhibitor was extinguished between preexposure and target training. The results are consistent with an account offered by the extended comparator hypothesis.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Protection from latent inhibition provided by a conditioned inhibitor.

McConnell

Wheeler

Urcelay

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

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“…Thus, when the target cue of the superlearning is presented at test, indirect activation of the outcome should be of effectively negative value and consequently should enhance responding to the target cue. Alternatively stated, the extended comparator hypothesis explains the superlearning phenomenon as super-responding at the time of testing rather than super-associative acquisition at the time of training (see Urushihara et al, 2005, for further elaboration).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Conversely, omission of an overshadowing/potentiation control would fail to differentiate between the enhanced responding of the experimental condition arising from the companion cue being inhibitory (i.e., superconditioning) or from potentiation by the companion cue which does not depend on its being inhibitory. Some more recent studies (e.g., Pearce & Redhead, 1995; Rescorla, 2004; Urushihara, Wheeler, Piñeno, & Miller, 2005; Williams & McDevitt, 2002) have provided evidence for genuine superconditioning with appropriate control conditions in Pavlovian conditioning preparations with nonhuman subjects.…”

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Causal superlearning arising from interactions among cues.

Urushihara¹,

Miller²

2017

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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Superconditioning refers to supernormal responding to a conditioned stimulus (CS) that sometimes occurs in classical conditioning when the CS is paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) in the presence of a conditioned inhibitor for that US. In the present research, we conducted four experiments to investigate causal superlearning, a phenomenon in human causal learning analogous to superconditioning. Experiment 1 demonstrated superlearning relative to appropriate control conditions. Experiment 2 showed that superlearning wanes when the number of cues used in an experiment is relatively large. Experiment 3 determined that even when relatively many cues are used, superlearning can be observed provided testing is conducted immediately after training, which is problematic for explanations by most contemporary learning theories. Experiment 4 found that ratings of a superlearning cue are weaker than those to the training excitor which gives basis to the conditioned inhibitor-like causal preventor used during causal superlearning training. This is inconsistent with the prediction by propositional reasoning accounts of causal cue competition, but is readily explained by associative learning models. In sum, the current experiments revealed some weaknesses of both the associative and propositional reasoning models with respect to causal superlearning.

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“…One necessary condition for those changes is that the nontarget stimulus must have a within-compound association with the target stimulus. Notably, these models cannot account for the observed effects of posttraining manipulations of stimuli that are only indirectly associated with the target stimulus (e.g., De Houwer & Beckers, 2002;Denniston, Savastano, Blaisdell, & Miller, 2003;Urushihara, Wheeler, Pineno, & Miller, 2005). Specifically, the revised Rescorla-Wagner and revised SOP models proposed by Van Hamme and Wasserman (1994; also see Wasserman & Castro, 2005) and Dickinson and Burke (1996; also see Aitken & Dickinson, 2005), respectively, both assume that the associative strength between the CS and the outcome can change on trials on which the target CS is absent but is expected based upon the presence on that trial of other cues previously associated with the target.…”

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Degraded contingency revisited: Posttraining extinction of a cover stimulus attenuates a target cue's behavioral control.

Witnauer¹,

Miller²

2007

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

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In a Pavlovian conditioning situation, unsignaled outcome presentations interspersed among cueoutcome pairings attenuate conditioned responding to the cue (i.e., the degraded contingency effect). However, if a nontarget cue signals these added outcomes, responding to the target cue is partially restored (i.e., the cover stimulus effect). In 2 conditioned suppression experiments using rats, the effect of posttraining extinction of the cover stimulus was examined. Experiment 1 found that this treatment yielded reduced responding to the target cue. Experiment 2 replicated this finding, while demonstrating that this basic effect was not due to acquired equivalence between the target cue and the cover stimulus. These results are consistent with the extended comparator hypothesis interpretation of the degraded contingency and cover stimulus effects. KeywordsPavlovian conditioning; degraded contingency; cover stimulus; contingency; comparator hypothesisThe degraded contingency effect, originally reported by Rescorla (1966Rescorla ( ,1968, is observed when unsignaled presentations of an unconditioned stimulus (US) are administered during training sessions in which a conditioned stimulus (CS) and a US are paired. These added US presentations diminish responding to the CS, independent of baseline responding in the context. The critical finding of these experiments was that responding to the CS was reduced by a manipulation that did not reduce the contiguity between the CS and the US. Early accounts of classical conditioning assumed that contiguity between stimuli was both necessary and sufficient for classical conditioning to occur (e.g., Bush & Mosteller, 1955). Therefore, the degraded contingency effect seemed inconsistent with pure contiguity accounts of classical conditioning that required only that the CS be consistently closely followed by the US.Initial explanations of the degraded contingency effect posited that attention to, or learning about, the CS was attenuated by contextual stimuli that became excitatory during the unsignaled presentations of the US, thereby preventing subjects from learning the association between the CS and the US (e.g., Mackintosh, 1975;Rescorla & Wagner, 1972). These sorts of accounts are similar to those offered for blocking (Kamin, 1968), but with the training context acting as the blocking cue. For example, the Rescorla-Wagner model of learning explains blocking by assuming there is a finite amount of associative strength supportable by a given US, and the majority of this associative strength is absorbed by the blocking CS during the elemental training phase (A-US), leaving little for the blocked CS at the time of subsequent compound training (XA-US). Applied to the degraded contingency preparation, US-alone presentations make the training context highly excitatory so it comes to block acquisition of the CS-US association. Essentially, this account of the degraded contingency effect assumes that the Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ralph R. Miller...

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An Extended Comparator Hypothesis Account of Superconditioning.

Cited by 16 publications

References 32 publications

Protection from latent inhibition provided by a conditioned inhibitor.

Protection from latent inhibition provided by a conditioned inhibitor.

Causal superlearning arising from interactions among cues.

Degraded contingency revisited: Posttraining extinction of a cover stimulus attenuates a target cue's behavioral control.

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