Biological significance attenuates overshadowing, relative validity, and degraded contingency effects

Abstract

Miller and Matute (1996) showed that blocking is attenuated when the blocked conditioned stimulus (CS) is "biologicallysignificant" (i.e., when the CS has the potential to elicit vigorous responding of any kind). To the extent that blocking is representative of cue competition, this finding suggests that biological significance protects CSs against cue competition effects in general. In the present experiments, we tested this possibility by examining the influence of biological significance of CSS on other examples of cue competition, namely, overshadowing, the relative stimulus validity effect, and the degraded contingency effect in rats. In Experiment 1,we found that intense auditory stimuli induced transient unconditioned lick suppression, thereby indicating that intense sounds were of high inherent biological significance. In Experiment 2A, we found that cues with high inherent biological significance were protected from overshadowing. In Experiment 2B, this finding was extended to cues with high acquired biological significance, which was obtained through prior pairings with a reinforcer of the valence opposite to that used in the overshadowing treatment. In Experiments 3 and 4, we found that cues with high inherent biological significance attenuated the relative validity effect and the degraded contingency effect, respectively. These results lend support to the view that biological significance (inherent and acquired) protects stimuli from cue competition effects, a finding that is problematic for many contemporary theories of learning.The concept ofinherent biological significance has been well captured in the learning literature by the notion ofan unconditioned stimulus (US). For example, Pavlov (1927) recognized that the stimulus he typically chose as a US (i.e., food) beckoned approach, salivation, ingestion, and so forth, whereas his conditioned stimuli (CSs) initially elicited only weak orienting responses. As a result, he concluded that USs had greater "biological strength" than

Blocking in landmark-based search in honeybees

“…Still to be determined in pursuing such spatial/temporal parallels are the conditions that engender blocking and cue competition. Miller, Matute, and colleagues have recently found that biologically significant stimuli are less subject to blocking and other phenomena of cue competition than biologically insignificant stimuli (Denniston, Miller, & Matute, 1996;Oberling, Bristol, Matute, & Miller, 2000). Whether this also holds in the spatial domain remains an open question.…”

Learning with arbitrary versus ecological conditioned stimuli: Evidence from sexual conditioning

“…Feldman (1975) found that increasing the intensity of the to-be-blocked stimulus makes that stimulus less susceptible to blocking. Similarly, Miller and Matute (1996) demonstrated that blocking is less likely if the to-beblocked stimulus is of greater "biological significance," as measured by the vigor of baseline responding to that stimulus (see also Oberling, Bristol, Matute, & Miller, 2000). In other research, LoLordo et al (1982) found that a CS that is more relevant to the US is resistant to the blocking effect in appetitive and aversive conditioning with pigeons.…”

“…Most previous studies of CS effects have not identified such a large constellation of phenomena related to the nature of the CS. The strongest precedent for our f indings comes from studies of nonsexual appetitive and aversive conditioning, showing that the use of a biologically significant CS can attenuate blocking and other stimulus competition effects (Feldman, 1975;LoLordo et al, 1982;Miller & Matute, 1996;Oberling et al, 2000).…”

Spontaneous recovery and ABC renewal from retroactive cue interference

“…We used a sensory preconditioning procedure because retroactive cue interference is severely attenuated if the target cue acquires high biological significance prior to the interference treatment (Escobar et al, 2001), due to difficultly in attenuating, through indirect means, the response to a cue that has already acquired the potential to elicit a vigorous response (e.g., Denniston, Miller, & Matute, 1996;Escobar et al, 2001;Oberling, Bristol, Matute, & Miller, 2000). In our sensory preconditioning design, we controlled for the time between the presentation of the biological significance event and testing to equate nonassociative factors evoked by biologically significant events.…”