Forward blocking depends on retrospective inferences about the presence of the blocked cue during the elemental phase.
When a compound cue AT is followed by an outcome (AT+), human participants will judge the relation between cue T and the outcome to be less strong if A alone was previously paired with the outcome (A+). According to the probabilistic contrast model, such a blocking effect is due to the fact that participants regard the A+ trials as trials on which A and the outcome are present but T is absent. The results of two studies showed that when the status of T was ambiguous during the A+ trials, judgments about T depended on subsequent information about the presence of T during the A+ trials. These findings support the probabilistic contrast model but are incompatible with the (revised) Rescorla-Wagner (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) model.
De
Houwer Jan
HJ
University of Southampton, England. jan.dehouwer@rug.ac.be
D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011337:Probability Learning; D011340:Problem Solving; D012718:Set, Psychology