Stimulus-outcome interactions during instrumental discrimination learning by rats and humans.
The associative structure mediating goal-directed action was investigated using congruent and incongruent conditional discriminations. The stimulus was the same as the outcome in each component of the congruent discriminations, whereas the stimulus of one component of the incongruent discriminations was the same as the outcome of the other component. Humans, but not rats, learned the congruent discrimination more rapidly than the incongruent discrimination, a difference that the authors attribute to the fact that outcome-response associations caused response conflict in the incongruent discrimination. Moreover, responding was resistant to outcome devaluation following incongruent, but not congruent, training, suggesting that both humans and rats adopted a stimulus-response strategy to resolve the incongruent discrimination.
de Wit
S
S
Department of Experimental PsychologyUniversity of Cambridge, Cambridge, England. sd322@cam.ac.uk
Niry
D
D
Wariyar
R
R
Aitken
M R F
MR
Dickinson
A
A
D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D018021:Lithium Chloride / Q000633:toxicity; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D051381:Rats; D011930:Reaction Time; D012055:Reinforcement Schedule; D012528:Satiety Response; D013045:Species Specificity; D013649:Taste
D018021:Lithium Chloride