Causal beliefs and conditioned responses: retrospective revaluation induced by experience and by instruction.
The author tested causal beliefs and conditioned responses in a task involving retrospective revaluation of the causal status of a target cue with respect to electric shock. Successful revaluation was observed on both self-report shock expectancy and skin conductance, whether the training trials were directly experienced, described, or partly experienced and partly described. The results contradict models that link anticipatory conditioned responses to a separate or earlier process from that underlying explicit causal knowledge. They suggest instead that a single learning process gives rise to propositional knowledge that (a) drives anticipatory responding, (b) forms the basis for self-reported causal beliefs, and (c) can be combined with other knowledge, provided either by experience or symbolically, to generate inferences such as retrospective revaluation.
Lovibond
Peter F
PF
School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. P.Lovibond@unsw.edu.au
D001245:Association Learning; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D013663:Teaching / Q000379:methods*