title: When congruence breeds preference: the influence of selective attention processes on evaluative conditioning.
abstract: We investigated in two experiments whether selective attention processes modulate evaluative conditioning (EC). Based on the fact that the typical stimuli in an EC paradigm involve an affect-laden unconditioned stimulus (US) and a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS), we started from the assumption that learning might depend in part upon selective attention to the US. Attention to the US was manipulated by including a variant of the Eriksen flanker task in the EC paradigm. Similarly to the original Flanker paradigm, we implemented a target-distracter logic by introducing the CS as the task-relevant stimulus (i.e. the target) to which the participants had to respond and the US as a task-irrelevant distracter. Experiment 1 showed that CS-US congruence modulated EC if the CS had to be selected against the US. Specifically, EC was more pronounced for congruent CS-US pairs as compared to incongruent CS-US pairs. Experiment 2 disentangled CS-US congruence and CS-US compatibility and suggested that it is indeed CS-US stimulus congruence rather than CS-US response compatibility that modulates EC.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Trier , Trier , Germany.
authors.forename: Katarina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Blask
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Trier , Trier , Germany.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Walther
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , University of Trier , Trier , Germany.
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Frings
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation
keywords: Evaluative conditioning; compatibility; congruence; selective attention