Confounding of controllability in the triadic design for demonstrating learned helplessness.

Abstract

This research was supported by grants from the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities Basic Research Foundation and the Schwartz Foundation. Experiments 1 and 2 were conducted by the second author, under the direction of the first author, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the master's degree.Requests for reprints should be sent to R.

The Conditioned Attention Theory and Bifactorial Theory on the Learned Helplessness Syndrome in Appetitive Contexts

“…Our data are consiste nt w ith those of Lubow et al (1981), w ho proved that the effects of learned helplessne ss are the result of conditioned inattention to inescapabl e shock. As they argue, helplessne ss training entails exposure to lack of conting ency between a repeatedly presented event and any other event in the environment, w hich in turn teaches the organis m to ig nore the noncontingent event.…”

“…Conditioned attention theory w as developed spe ci® cally to account for latent inhibitio n effects, but it is also relevant to othe r phenomena in the area of learning, particularly to those situations w here the target stimulus is presented under conditions in w hich attention is diverted from it by competing stimuli, such as in blocking and overshadow ing. The relationshi p betw een conditioned attention theory and helplessness w as explored by Lubow et al in 1981 . Learned helplessness and latent inhibition paradig ms both involv e noncontingent pre-exposure to stimuli that are to be used later in a learning task, and in both, subsequent learning decrements to the pre-expose d stimuli are obtained.…”

“…The decremental effects are due to inattention conditioning , so that any event (e.g. a tone, a light) in the environment correlated w ith the shock should attenuate the learned helplessness effect even though the animals in the group do not have the opportunity to control shock termination (Lubow , Rosenblat, & Weiner, 1981).…”

Human Learned Helplessness

“…An entirely different explanation was presented by Lubow, Rosemblat, and Weiner (1981), who contended that LH effects result from conditioned inattention to the inescapable shock. In their terms, helplessness training entails exposure to lack of contingency between a repeatedly presented event and any other event in the environment, which in tum teaches the organism not to attend to the noncontingent event.…”

Learned helplessness as conditioned inattention to the target stimulus.

“…Nevertheless, the conditioned attention theory account was supported in two experiments by Lubow, Rosenblatt, and Weiner (1981) that did not confound controllability and the presence of an environmental event. In the first of these experiments, Lubow, Rosenblatt, and Weiner used the usual triadic design with a button-press task during training trials.…”