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Contextual dependencies in
predictive learning Two experiments assessed contextual
dependencies in a predictive-learning task. Subjects learned
to associate each of four pictorial stimuli with the occurrence
or non-occurrence of a specific outcome. Each of these stimuli,
the intentional stimuli, was presented against one of two different
visual (Experiment 1) or auditory (Experiment 2) context stimuli.
These context stimuli were incidental: subjects were not explicitly
instructed to pay any attention to them and each of them in isolation
was not predictive of the outcome. During acquisition and testing,
subjects expressed the expected relationship between intentional
stimulus and outcome by an appropriate key press. At test, intentional
stimuli were presented either with the same contextual stimulus
as also present during acquisition (same trials), or with the
other one (switched trials). The response latency was slower
on switched trials than on same trials in each experiment, a
result extending previous findings on the effect of environmental
contextual stimuli on task Keywords: Contextual dependency, predictive learning, response latency, retention, human |
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