Contingency Effects with Maintained Instrumental Reinforcement

Dickinson, Anthony; Charnock, Deborah

doi:10.1080/14640748508401177

Cited by 123 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Nonveridical performance and judgments can also be induced by contingency manipulations. Both Dickinson and Charnock (1985) and Hammond and Weinberg (1984) found that signaling noncontiguous reinforcers under a noncontingent schedule augmented the instrumental performance of rats. A corresponding illusion of control was induced in human causality judgment by Shanks (1989), using the same signaling operation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instrumental judgment and performance under variations in action-outcome contingency and contiguity

1991

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The intentional theory of instrumental performance proposes that performance of an action is determined in part by a belief about its causal effectiveness in producing a desired outcome. At variance with this notion, previous implicit learning experiments appear to have yielded dissociations between subjects' performance and beliefs. In two experiments, subjects were given an opportunity to perform an action-pressing a key on a computer keyboard-which was associated with an outcome on the computer screen according to a free-operant contingency. The subjects in one group were asked to judge the effectiveness of the action in causing the outcome, while those in a second group were asked to maximize their points score under a payoff schedule. In the first study, the effect of varying the contingency between the action and outcome was examined by keeping the probability of an outcome contiguous with an action constant and varying the probability of an outcome in the absence of an action. Performance and judgments showed a comparable sensitivity to variations ofthe instrumental contingency. In the second study, the delay between the action and the resultant outcome was varied. Increasing the action-outcome delay from 0 sec up to 4 sec produced a systematic decline in both causal judgments and performance relative to noncontingent, control conditions. These results are in accord with the intentional theory of performance, but they present difficulties for the notion of implicit learning.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instrumental judgment and performance under variations in action-outcome contingency and contiguity

1991

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“…Numerous investigators (e.g., Balsam, 1985;Dickinson & Charnock, 1985;Matzel, Brown, & Miller, 1987) have reported that nonreinforced exposure to an excitatory context enhances the CR to a CS previously trained in that context. However, the inverse relationship has not typically been observed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covariation in conditioned response strength between stimuli trained in compound

Matzel

Shuster

Miller

1987

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Conditioned lick suppression by water-deprived rats was used to elaborate on recent evidence that the attenuated conditioned response elicited by an overshadowed stimulus may be enhanced by extinction ofthe overshadowing stimulus with which it had been trained in simultaneous compound. Using a modified serial stimulus arrangement in which a light coexisted with the last half of a tone that terminated with footshock, it was found in Experiment 1 that the tone overshadowed the light. Extinction of the tone-shock association resulted in a virtually complete recovery of the response to the overshadowed light. Using this serial overshadowing procedure, the possibility that the strength of a conditioned response to an element trained in compound covaries as a function of the strength of the response to the other element was tested in Experiment 2. Following overshadowing training similar to that of Experiment 1, independent reinforcement of the overshadowed light, that is, associative inflation, was found to have no deleterious effect on the response to the overshadowing tone. This suggests that the effects of postconditioning extinction and inflation of one element do not have symmetrical effects upon responding to the other element. The results of Experiment 2 were replicated in Experiment 3 using a simultaneous compound stimulus as opposed to the serial compound of the previous studies. These results are discussed in terms of various associative and cognitive models of learning and performance.Recent reports by Kaufman and Bolles (1981) and Matzel, Schachtman, and Miller (1985) have indicated that the attenuated response evoked by a weak stimulus (X) following reinforcement in compound with a more salient stimulus (A) can be enhanced by postconditioning extinction (i.e., nonreinforced exposure) of A. These results challenge the traditional view that "overshadowing" deficits represent an acquisition failure with respect to the less salient cue (Kamin, 1969a;Mackintosh, 1975;Pavlov, 1927;Rescorla & Wagner, 1972). Kamin, for instance, suggested that when the more salient A stimulus is reinforced in compound with X, A acquires associative strength at a more rapid rate, quickly becoming a reliable predictor of the unconditioned stimulus (US). As the US is no longer "surprising," the less salient X cue, which is still at a subasymptotic associative level, acquires no additional associative strength. Similarly, Rescorla and Wagner (1972) proposed that the associative strength that a given US presentation can support is limited, and the more salient cue in a reinforced compound accrues the available strength at the expense of the less salient cue. These views of overshadowing assume that increments in associative strength are determined by the subject's expectation of the particular US paired with the compound stimulus. In contrast, both Mackintosh (1975) and Pearce Support for this research was provided by NSF Grant 86-00755. We are grateful to Ronald Sigmundi for his helpful comments on an early draft of this report. Add...

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“…Therefore, associative learning not only increases with the probability of the second event (E 2 ) given the first event (E 1 ), or in other words with the likelihood of contiguous pairings of E 1 and E 2 , but also decreases with the likelihood of E 2 in the absence of E 1 (e.g. [9,10]). Given that the stimulus and response function as the two events E 1 and E 2 , respectively, in sensorimotor learning, an associative account predicts that this form of learning should increase with P(R/S) but decrease with P(R/-S).This sensitivity to contingency is captured by, among others, the Rescorla-Wagner model of associative learning [24].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%