Stimulus avoidance and perceptual adaptation: a vicious cycle paradigm?
Restricting the encountered range of stimuli on a particular stimulus dimension changes a person's perceptual frame of reference, or adaptation level, for such stimuli. The present experiment explores the effect of stimulus avoidance on perceptual adaptation and subsequent avoidance. Results converge with previous findings to indicate that avoidance of danger signals reduces perceptual adaptation level for those signals. In the present experiment, subjects first avoided high-pitched danger-signal tones, thus restricting the range of tone stimuli they encountered, and subsequently overestimated the pitches of low-pitched safety-signal tones. They consequently avoided the low tones as if they were high-pitched danger signals. Perceptual adaptation was evident in subjects' tone pitch ratings only if they had rated the tones throughout their avoidance trials.
Lauterbach
W
W
Frankfurt University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Lauterbach@psych.uni-frankfurt.de
Kozak
M J
MJ
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010897:Pitch Discrimination