Cue competition influences biconditional discrimination

Byrom, Nicola; Murphy, Robin A.

doi:10.1080/17470218.2017.1363256

Cited by 13 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…That is, the same Passive rats that exhibited deficits in blocking were if anything better at solving complex nonlinear discriminations than their Agency counterparts. This finding is consistent with prior evidence that cue competition between the elements of a compound can hinder the solution of nonlinear discriminations 36 .…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Agency rescues competition for credit assignment among predictive cues from adverse learning conditions

Kang

Reverte

Volz

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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A fundamental assumption of learning theories is that the credit assigned to predictive cues is not simply determined by their probability of reinforcement, but by their ability to compete with other cues present during learning. This assumption has guided behavioral and neural science research for decades, and tremendous empirical and theoretical advances have been made identifying the mechanisms of cue competition. However, when learning conditions are not optimal (e.g., when training is massed), cue competition is attenuated. This failure of the learning system exposes the individual’s vulnerability to form spurious associations in the real world. Here, we uncover that cue competition in rats can be rescued when conditions are suboptimal provided that the individual has agency over the learning experience. Our findings reveal a new effect of agency over learning on credit assignment among predictive cues, and open new avenues of investigation into the underlying mechanisms.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Agency rescues competition for credit assignment among predictive cues from adverse learning conditions

Kang

Reverte

Volz

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Differences in the extent to which individuals use configurations of cues may still reflect differences in attention. Attentional breadth, a cognitive trait related to emotional arousal (Fredrickson, 2004), relates to an ability to solve configural discriminations such as negative patterning and biconditional discriminations (Byrom & Murphy, 2014, 2016b, 2017; see also McDonald et al, 1997, for an evaluation of the hippocampus in these tasks). Thus, while differences in ability to learn about multiple co-occurring stimuli may relate to some underlying ability to maintain or use task setting information, these differences may be related to attention.…”

Section: Example 3: Cs Processing Effects Schizotypy and Schizophreniamentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences are more than a gene × environment interaction: The role of learning.

Byrom

Murphy

2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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Individual differences in behavior are understood generally as arising from an interaction between genes and environment, omitting a crucial component. The literature on animal and human learning suggests the need to posit principles of learning to explain our differences. One of the challenges for the advancement of the field has been to establish how general principles of learning can explain the almost infinite variation in behavior. We present a case that: 1) individual differences in behavior emerge, in part, from principles of learning; 2) associations provide a descriptive mechanism for understanding the contribution of experience to behavior; 3) learning theories explain dissociable aspects of behavior. We use four examples from the field of learning to illustrate the importance of involving psychology, and associative theory in particular, in the analysis of individual differences, these are; i) fear learning, ii) behavior directed to cues for outcomes (i.e., sign-and goaltracking), iii) stimulus learning related to attention, and iv) human causal learning. Individual Differences 3A goal of research into learning is to characterize how behavior changes with experience within and across species. Thorndike's (1898) Law of Effect was an early attempt to characterize the effect of experience on behavior. In offering a general law of how experience contributes to behavior, Thorndike was also giving an account of how an individual becomes unique.The classic example of Thorndike's method involved cats and an apparatus known as a puzzle box (Thorndike, 1898). The box was a rudimentary cage with latches and gates to afford escape. The cats' dislike of confined space provided a natural motivation to engage in behaviors that might serendipitously lead to release. Thorndike observed that the cats made many false starts but eventually made a response that enabled escape. With repeated exposure to the box, latency to escape decreased. The Law of Effect stated that behaviors preceding any form of 'satisfaction' (e.g., escape) would be reinforced and made more likely on subsequent trials. However, rather than considering this principle as limiting an animal's flexibility to learn, the law only restricts the conditions for learning. Consider that outside the lab, different humans can successfully complete a motivated goal in different ways. They may behave differently but the same Law of Effect strengthens their behaviors.The goals of this paper are to present the case for the individual differences approach to learning theory. We will argue that (1) learning mediates the influence of genes and environment on behavior and (2) there is complexity, to be explored, within models of learning that can account for diversity in learning. Specifically, we suggest that while genes and environment may contribute to the development of differences in learning, that an individual's phenotype interacts with experience and the memories of experience to further cause individual differences. As such, the study of individual diff...

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“…Note that this result is not surprising, since we anticipated that the color category might be easier to learn about. Unbalanced salience between stimuli has been shown to impair learning of biconditional discrimination in humans (Byrom & Murphy, 2019), and consequently, it could be the case that our stimuli, by virtue of their unequal saliences, prevented the transfer a configural processing to overshadowing training in group Biconditional. Additionally, other studies have shown that transfer effects enhancing configural processing were only reliable on the very first block of training of a subsequent discrimination (Mehta & Russell, 2009), suggesting that in general the transfer of the configural pretraining may be dependent upon very specific parameters of training or may be short lived (see Urcelay & Miller, 2010; Wheeler et al, 2008).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Category relevance attenuates overshadowing in human predictive learning.

Alcalá

Prados

Urcelay

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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In situations in which multiple predictors anticipate the presence or absence of an outcome, cues compete to anticipate the outcome, resulting in a loss of associative strength compared to control conditions without additional cues. Critically, there are multiple factors modulating the magnitude and direction of such competition, although in some scenarios the effect of these factors remains unexplored. We sought to assess whether the relative salience of the elements in a compound of cues modulates the magnitude of the overshadowing effect in human predictive learning. Two separable categories (i.e., colors and symbols) were used in a predictive learning task. In Experiment 1, different groups of participants were granted with different time of exposure to a compound of cues belonging to different categories (color and symbol) to evaluate potential differences in the magnitude of overshadowing. Furthermore, we used posttest questionnaires to assess whether participants used either only one or both categories during training, and assessed if this impacted the magnitude of overshadowing. In general, overshadowing was not modulated by the time of exposition, except in the case of very short time of exposition with prominent learning about the most salient category. In Experiment 2, the relative salience of a category was biased via prior experience either with a biconditional discrimination or attending only the relevant category (either color or symbol). The previously relevant category was less prone to overshadowing, but not the alternative one. Results are discussed in light of attentional and configural theories of associative learning.

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Cue competition influences biconditional discrimination

Cited by 13 publications

References 28 publications

Agency rescues competition for credit assignment among predictive cues from adverse learning conditions

Agency rescues competition for credit assignment among predictive cues from adverse learning conditions

Individual differences are more than a gene × environment interaction: The role of learning.

Category relevance attenuates overshadowing in human predictive learning.

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