title: Learned irrelevance and retrospective correlation learning.
abstract: In 1973 Mackintosh reported an interference effect that he called learned irrelevance in which exposure to uncorrelated (CS/US) presentation of the unconditional stimulus (US) and the conditioned stimulus (CS) interfered with future Pavlovian conditioning. It has been argued that there is no specific interference effect in learned irrelevance; rather the interference is the sum of independent CS and US exposure effects (CS + US). We review previous research on this question and report two new experiments. We conclude that learned irrelevance is a consequence of a contingency learning and a specific learned irrelevance mechanism. Moreover even the independent exposure controls, used in previous experiments to support the CS and US exposure account, provide support for the correlation learning process.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada. andy@hebb.psych.mcgill.ca
authors.forename: A G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Baker
authors.forename: Robin A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.forename: Rick
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mehta
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar