Effects of noun imagery and awareness of the discriminative cue upon differential eyelid conditioning to grammatical and ungrammatical phrases

Abstract

Two differential eyelid conditioning studies employed grammatically correct and incorrect adjective-noun phrases as conditioned stimuli. For different groups of subjects, the nouns were either high or low in imagery. The hypothesis that congruency between grammatical correctness and reinforcement consequences (Le., the aversive stimulus contingent upon presence of incorrect rather than correct grammar) would facilitate conditioned discrimination was not supported, but the hypothesis that high noun imagery would facilitate differential response to syntax received strong support. Cognitive awareness of the syntactic discriminandum was also related to effective differential responding, as well as being implicated as a mediating mechanism in the imagery effects. Finally, performance was also significantly related to conditioned-response topography, with better conditioned discrimination by voluntary-form (V) than by conditioned-form (C) responders, and also evidence of more effective utilization of contingency awareness by Vs than by Cs.The present research had four major aims. The first aim was to determine whether a congruency effect previously obtained with arithmetic conditioned discriminanda (Fleming, Cerekwicki, & Grant, 1968;Fleming, Grant, North, & Levy, 1968) would likewise apply to verbal stimuli involving syntactic correctness as the differential cue. The arithmetic studies employed correctly and incorrectly solved arithmetic problems as differential conditioned stimuli (CSs), and found that discrimination was best when incorrect rather than correct problems were followed by aversive reinforcement, or when correct rather than incorrect problems were followed by positive reinforcement. On the basis of these data, Grant's (1972) conditioning model proposed that the learning of CS-reinforcement contingencies is facilitated to the extent that these contingencies are congruent with contingency codes already present in the long-term memory store (LTMS), in that instance, pre experimental codes relating reward and punishment to right and wrong arithmetic, respectively. This model would likewise imply that Requests for reprints may be sent to

Awareness is essential for differential delay eyeblink conditioning with soft-tone but not loud-tone conditioned stimuli

“…Previous studies [12,[19][20][21] have shown that differential DEC only appears in participants who know the relationship between the CSs and the US, which is consistent with the latter view that DEC is awareness-dependent. Similarly, two recent reports [13,22] also reached the same conclusions.…”

Impact of Healthy Aging on Awareness and Fear Conditioning.

“…In a series of studies, Clark and colleagues (2002) have shown that awareness of the reinforcement contingency is necessary for trace, but not delay, eyeblink conditioning (but see Lovibond & Shanks, 2002). However, other studies have shown that awareness and attentional manipulations influence discriminative (multiple-cue) eyeblink conditioning on both delay and trace tasks (Baer & Fuhrer, 1982;Benish & Grant, 1980;Carrillo et al, 2000;Knuttinen et al, 2001;Nelson & Ross, 1974;Perry et al, 1977;Ross & Nelson, 1973). There is more consistent evidence for a role of awareness in discriminative autonomic conditioning, irrespective of whether awareness is tested postexperimentally or online during acquisition training (Baer & Fuhrer, 1968, 1969Biferno & Dawson, 1977;Dawson & Biferno, 1973;Furedy et al, 1982;Furedy & Schiffman, 1973;Hamm & Vaitl, 1996;Lovibond, 1992;Marinkovic, Schell, & Dawson, 1989;Purkis & Lipp, 2001;Schiffman & Furedy, 1977).…”

“…Clark and Squire (1998) have argued that contingency awareness is necessary for performance on trace, but not delay, eyeblink conditioning tasks. However, other studies of fear conditioning (Baer & Fuhrer, 1968, 1969Biferno & Dawson, 1977;Dawson & Biferno, 1973;Furedy, Arabian, Thiels, & George, 1982;Furedy & Schiffman, 1973;Schiffman & Furedy, 1977) and eyeblink conditioning (Baer & Fuhrer, 1982;Benish & Grant, 1980;Knuttinen et al, 2001;Nelson & Ross, 1974;Perry, Grant, & Schwartz, 1977;Ross & Nelson, 1973) have shown influences of awareness and attention on discriminative learning in which one CS predicts reinforcement (CSϩ) but another does not (CSϪ), even for delay tasks (but see Knight, Nguyen, & Bandettini, 2003). Moreover, awareness of reinforcement contingencies decreases with aging (Knuttinen et al, 2001).…”

Parallel acquisition of awareness and differential delay eyeblink conditioning

“…Previous studies of differential delay eyeblink conditioning have found that only contingency-aware participants are able to acquire differential conditioning (Nelson and Ross 1974;Perry et al 1977;Benish and Grant 1980;Knuttinen et al 2001). Manns et al (2002) attempted to explain these differences by pointing out that there are some significant differences in the methodologies between their studies and the previous research, such as the complexity of the stimuli used, the way in which eyeblinks were measured, and whether voluntary responses were excluded from the analyses.…”