Beyond awareness and resources: Evaluative conditioning may be sensitive to processing goals

Corneille, Olivier; Yzerbyt, Vincent; Pleyers, Gordy; Mussweiler, Thomas

doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.08.020

Cited by 70 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…In the present research, the 2-back task may have distracted Ps from the evaluative meaning of the stimuli, thereby reducing EC effects. Of note, this alternative account of our findings would also support the view that EC of high-novelty stimuli is not based on purely automatic associative processes (as it would then depend on processing goals; see also Corneille et al, 2009). But, even more importantly, given the strong impact of our load manipulation on contingency-awareness, it seems logical to assume that our 2-back task manipulation did affect our participants' attentional resources, not just their mindset.…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptsupporting

confidence: 70%

“…However, evidence has now accumulated that questions this claim: EC has been shown to be sensitive to processing goals (Corneille, Pleyers, Yzerbyt & Mussweiler, 2009;Gast & Rothermund, 2010), attentional resources (Pleyers, Corneille, Luminet, & Yzerbyt, 2007) and, more important, awareness for CS-US pairings (e.g., Dawson, Rissling, Schell & Wilcon, 2007;Klucken, Kagerer, Schweckendiek, Tabbert, Vaitl, & Stark, 2009;Lascelles & Davey, 2006;Lipp & Purkis, 2005;Lovibond & Shanks, 2002; Pleyers, Corneille, Luminet, & Yzerbyt, 2007;Stahl & Unkelbach, 2009;Stahl, Unkelbach, & Corneille, 2009;Wardle, Mitchell, & Lovibond, 2007). As a whole, the current evidence suggests that EC is based on propositional rather than associative processes (see De Houwer, 2009;Mitchell, De Houwer & Lovibond, 2009), which in turn has important implications for current conceptualizations of attitudes formation.…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because the load manipulation was strictly similar to that used by Pleyers et al (2009), it is unreasonable to argue that the load effect simply reflects participants' visual avoidance of the computer screen in the High-Load condition: participants were instructed to carefully monitor the information displayed on the screen and the concurrent task involved a sensory channel (auditory) that was different from that used for conditioning (visual). It is much more sensible to assume that EC of both lownovelty (Pleyers et al, 2009) and high-novelty (the present study) stimuli requires a successful encoding of the CS-US pairings, and that the latter encoding is resource-dependent.…”

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Evaluative conditioning of high-novelty stimuli does not seem to be based on an automatic form of associative learning

Dedonder

Corneille

Yzerbyt

et al. 2010

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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Section: Accepted M Manuscriptsupporting

confidence: 70%

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Accepted M Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Evaluative conditioning of high-novelty stimuli does not seem to be based on an automatic form of associative learning

Dedonder

Corneille

Yzerbyt

et al. 2010

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

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“…In two unconscious-goal-pursuit experiments, Eitam, Hassin, and Schul (2008) demonstrated that implicitly primed performance goals (i.e., the goal to perform well in the task) had a facilitative effect on implicitlearning effects. Similarly, Corneille, Yzerbyt, Pleyers, and Mussweiler (2009) primed participants with the implicit goal to process similarities versus differences between stimuli, and they found that the goal to process similarities between stimuli led to larger evaluative-conditioning effects. Although performance goals such as these are clearly quite different from the goal to learn used in the present investigation, these past reports are consistent with our findings in showing that goals can have a positive influence on the amount of learning observed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adding the goal to learn strengthens learning in an unintentional learning task

Schmidt

Houwer

2012

Psychon Bull Rev

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Previous research has demonstrated that contingency learning can take place in the absence of the intention to learn. For instance, in the color-word contingency learning task, each distracting word is presented most often in a given target color (e.g., "month" in red and "plate" in green), and less often in the other colors. Participants respond more quickly and accurately when the word is presented in the expected rather than an unexpected color, even though there is no reason why they would have the intention to learn the contingencies between the words and the colors. It remains to be determined, however, whether learning in such situations would benefit or suffer from adding the goal to learn contingencies. In the reported experiment, half of the participants were informed that each word was presented most often in a certain color, and they were instructed to try to learn these contingencies. The other half of the participants were not informed that contingencies would be present. The participants given the learning goal produced a larger response time contingency effect than did the control participants. In contrast to some results from other learning paradigms, these results suggest that intentional learning adds to, rather than interferes with, unintentional learning, and we propose an explanation for some of the conflicting results.Keywords Implicit learning . Human memory . Automaticity . GoalsWithin the literature on human contingency learning (Schmidt, 2012), several paradigms have emerged that have proved useful in the study of unintentional-learning processes. One example of this is the color-word contingency learning paradigm introduced by Schmidt and colleagues (Schmidt & Besner, 2008;Schmidt, Crump, Cheesman, & Besner, 2007; Schmidt & De Houwer, 2012, in press;Schmidt, De Houwer, & Besner, 2010). In this paradigm, each distracting word is presented most often in a certain target color (e.g., "month" most often in red, "plate" most often in green), and participants respond more quickly and accurately to trials in which the word is presented in its high-contingency color (e.g., "month" in red) rather than a low-contingency color (e.g., "month" in green). Contingency awareness is generally quite limited in this paradigm, and learning often seems to occur without awareness: Participants who say that they are not aware of the contingencies and who do not guess above chance which words went with which colors still show the effect (Schmidt et al., 2007). Because participants are typically unaware of the contingencies, it is unlikely that they have the intention to learn them. Moreover, the instructions remain silent about the presence of the contingencies, and participants are thus not asked to learn them. One could argue that participants might still form the intention to learn the contingencies in order to improve their performance in the response time task. However, the response time task is so simple (i.e., reacting to colors) and response times are so short that an intentional strategy to...

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“…As such, X and Y strings were presented at the end of a string compound in terms of a left-to-right reading direction. That arrangement may have limited the amount of attention paid to those strings by some of the participants; evidence suggests that although a lack of contingency awareness does not disrupt EC, a lack of attention to the stimuli that are presented does (Corneille, Yzerbyt, Pleyers, & Mussweiler, 2009;Field & Moore, 2005). Whatever the explanation, it does not diminish the fact that the difference in training history of the A and B competitor strings between the blocking and the control group had no effect whatsoever on the evaluations and preferences acquired for the X and Y strings, amounting to a complete lack of blocking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluative Conditioning is Insensitive to Blocking

Beckers

Baeyens

2009

PSYCHOL BELG

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Evaluative conditioning has been claimed to have a number of functional characteristics that set it apart from other forms of associative learning in humans, such as insensitivity to extinction and contingency, independence of contingency awareness, and insensitivity to modulation. Despite its potential theoretical importance, until now few data are available concerning the susceptibility of evaluative conditioning to cue competition effects such as blocking. In the present study, we assessed the susceptibility of acquired preferences and evaluations to blocking in a candy game. Results suggest that evaluative conditioning is not susceptible to blocking. We discuss this observation in the light of theoretical accounts of evaluative conditioning and associative learning in humans.Preferences and evaluations have a tremendous impact on human behaviour, as research in fields such as social psychology (e.g

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Beyond awareness and resources: Evaluative conditioning may be sensitive to processing goals

Cited by 70 publications

References 26 publications

Evaluative conditioning of high-novelty stimuli does not seem to be based on an automatic form of associative learning

Evaluative conditioning of high-novelty stimuli does not seem to be based on an automatic form of associative learning

Adding the goal to learn strengthens learning in an unintentional learning task

Evaluative Conditioning is Insensitive to Blocking

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