title: A behavioural preparation for the study of human Pavlovian conditioning.
abstract: Conditioned suppression is a useful technique for assessing whether subjects have learned a CS-US association, but it is difficult to use in humans because of the need for an aversive US. The purpose of this research was to develop a non-aversive procedure that would produce suppression. Subjects learned to press the space bar of a computer as part of a video game, but they had to stop pressing whenever a visual US appeared, or they would lose points. In Experiment 1, we used an A+/B- discrimination design: The US always followed Stimulus A and never followed Stimulus B. Although no information about the existence of CSs was given to the subjects, suppression ratio results showed a discrimination learning curve-that is, subjects learned to suppress responding in anticipation of the US when Stimulus A was present but not during the presentations of Stimulus B. Experiment 2 explored the potential of this preparation by using two different instruction sets and assessing post-experimental judgements of CS A and CS B in addition to suppression ratios. The results of these experiments suggest that conditioned suppression can be reliably and conveniently used in the human laboratory, providing a bridge between experiments on animal conditioning and experiments on human judgements of causality.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicología, Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao, Spain.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Arcediano
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ortega
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Matute
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D003657:Decision Making; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D006801:Humans; D012107:Research Design