Evaluative conditioning of high-novelty stimuli does not seem to be based on an automatic form of associative learning

What do memory data tell us about the role of contingency awareness in evaluative conditioning?

“…If EC effects are found in the absence of accurate memory for the CS-US contingencies, it is inferred that attitudes can be influenced by CS-US pairings outside of conscious awareness (e.g., Baeyens et al, 1990;Field & Moore, 2005;Fulcher & Hammerl, 2001;Jones et al, 2009;Walther & Nagengast, 2006). If, however, EC effects are found only when participants show accurate memory for the CS-US contingencies, it is assumed that attitudes remain unaffected by CS-US pairings unless participants are consciously aware of these pairings during encoding (e.g., Dawson et al, 2007;Dedonder et al, 2010;Pleyers et al, 2007;.…”

“…This pattern is typically interpreted as evidence that EC effects require conscious awareness of CS-US contingencies during encoding (e.g., Dawson et al, 2007;Dedonder et al, 2010;Pleyers et al, 2007;. In this interpretation, the covariation between evaluation and memory performance is assumed to reflect the impact of contingency awareness as a moderating antecedent of EC effects.…”

“…Because EC is often treated as a prototypical example of associative learning, the question of whether EC effects can occur in the absence of contingency awareness has important implications for the debate about dual-process and singleprocess theories. 1 Although the assumption that EC does not require contingency awareness is rather widespread in the social psychological literature, its validity has been challenged by several studies that found EC effects only when participants were able to report the contingency between the CS and the US (e.g., Bar-Anan, De Houwer, & Nosek, 2010;Dawson, Rissling, Schell, & Wilcox, 2007;Dedonder, Corneille, Yzerbyt, & Kuppens, 2010;Pleyers, Corneille, Luminet, & Yzerbyt, 2007;Stahl, Unkelbach, & Corneille, 2009). These findings not only fueled controversies about the learning mechanisms that underlie EC effects (e.g., De Houwer, 2009;Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006, 2009Hofmann et al, 2010;Jones et al, 2010;Kruglanski & Gigerenzer, 2011;Mitchell et al, 2009); they also sparked disputes about the proper way of measuring contingency awareness in EC studies (e.g., Jones et al, 2009;Pleyers et al, 2007).…”

Evaluative conditioning: Recent developments and future directions

“…Research on the influence of secondary tasks during the presentation of CS-US pairings is relevant for the resource-independence of the processes that operate during the INTRODUCTION 21 acquisition phase (e.g., Dedonder et al, 2010;Pleyers et al, 2009;Walther, 2002). It has to be noted, however, that potential effects of a secondary task could also be due to differences in task-related goals.…”

“…Furthermore, manipulating cognitive resources by means of attentional tasks might also influence the acquisition of conscious knowledge about the pairings. In such cases, the effect of the secondary task manipulation might be indirect in the sense that it is mediated by conscious knowledge about the pairings (Dedonder et al, 2010;). These ambiguities require sophisticated methods to disentangle the effects of attention, goals, resources, and knowledge.…”