Configural processes in human associative learning.

Abstract

The extent to which human discrimination learning is based on elemental or configural stimulus representations was examined in 7 experiments. In Experiments la and 1b, participants were able to learn nonlinear discrimination problems in a food-allergy task. In unique-cue theories, such learning is explained by individual stimulus elements acquiring independent connections with the outcome and also combining to form unique cues that function elementally. In Stage 1 of Experiments 2, 3, and 4a-c, Food A signaled an allergy outcome (O) (A -O) when presented alone but signaled no allergy (AB -no 0) when paired with Food B. In Stage 2, Food B was paired with the allergy (B -»O). In a test phase, the original discrimination between A and AB was found to be intact, at variance with the unique-cue theory. By contrast, in Experiments 5a, 5b, and 6, an effect of the B -* O trials on the A-AB discrimination was observed with training procedures previously found by D. A. Williams (1995) to encourage elemental processing. Experiment 7 showed that the influence of B -* O trials on the A-AB discrimination was unaffected by pretreatments designed to foster an elemental processing strategy. Overall, these results are problematic for unique-cue theories and instead imply that, by default, configurations of elements form the representational basis of simple discrimination learning in humans.

The Automaticity of Visual Statistical Learning.

“…Our results also parallel a feature of associative models of Pavlovian conditioning and causal learning (see Williams & Braker, 1999), in which experience with compound cues-analogous to our multidimensional objects-results in associations involving those compounds, but not their constituent elements (e.g., Pearce, 1987; see also Shanks, Charles, Darby, & Azmi, 1998;Williams, Sagness, & McPhee, 1994).…”

Towards an understanding of the mechanisms of weak central coherence effects: experiments in visual configural learning and auditory perception

“…Thus, it might be said that while the group with autism showed a bias towards feature processing, the typically developing group showed a bias towards configural processing. This bias in the typically developing children is not unexpected: the same has been shown in several studies with typical adults (Williams et al 1994;Shanks et al 1998). The weak central coherence hypothesis might account for these pat-terns by arguing that, while in normal individuals there is a drive for coherence which interfered with performance on feature trials, the lack of this drive in autism resulted in a bias for feature processing, which interfered with processing the configuration of the features on configural trials.…”

Effects of pretraining on acquisition of novel configural discriminations in human predictive learning

“…For example, Pearce's configural theory (Pearce, 1987(Pearce, , 1994 is better than the Rescorla-Wagner model (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) in accounting for resistance to interference ( , ; , , y , , (Pearce & Wilson, 1991;Shanks, Charles, Darby, & Azmi, 1998;Williams, Gawel, Reimer, & Mehta, 2005) and for salience effects in disd crimination learning (Pearce & Redhead, 1993;Redhead & Pearce, 1995), whereas the Rescorla-Wagner model is better able to account for summation (Myers, Vogel, Shin, & Wagner, 2001;Rescorla, 1997Rescorla, , 1999Wagner, 2003) and relative validity (Wagner, Logan, Haberlandt, t & Price, 1968). Thus, there is growing acceptance that r the extent to which stimuli are processed configurally or elementally is flexible, rather than representing mutually exclusive alternatives.…”