title: The elusive nature of the blocking effect: 15 failures to replicate.
abstract: With the discovery of the blocking effect, learning theory took a huge leap forward, because blocking provided a crucial clue that surprise is what drives learning. This in turn stimulated the development of novel association-formation theories of learning. Eventually, the ability to explain blocking became nothing short of a touchstone for the validity of any theory of learning, including propositional and other nonassociative theories. The abundance of publications reporting a blocking effect and the importance attributed to it suggest that it is a robust phenomenon. Yet, in the current article we report 15 failures to observe a blocking effect despite the use of procedures that are highly similar or identical to those used in published studies. Those failures raise doubts regarding the canonical nature of the blocking effect and call for a reevaluation of the central status of blocking in theories of learning. They may also illustrate how publication bias influences our perspective toward the robustness and reliability of seemingly established effects in the psychological literature. (PsycINFO Database Record
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, KU Leuven.
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Maes
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, KU Leuven.
authors.forename: Yannick
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Boddez
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, KU Leuven.
authors.forename: Joaquín Matías
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Alfei
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University.
authors.forename: Angelos-Miltiadis
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Krypotos
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, KU Leuven.
authors.forename: Rudi
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: D'Hooge
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: De Houwer
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, KU Leuven.
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Beckers
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005260:Female; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D015203:Reproducibility of Results