<strong>Valence generalization across non-recurring structures</strong>

Abstract

Semantically meaningless strings that are associated with affective attributes (US) can become emotionally valenced CS. Jurchiș et al (2020) recently demonstrated CS-US associations may influence evaluations towards previously-unseen letter strings if the latter share grammar construction rules with CS. We replicated those authors' findings in a modified extension (Experiment 1; N1 = 108), where happy/angry faces (US) were differentially associated with letter strings (CS) constructed using familiar (English) or non-familiar (Phoenician) alphabets. CS-US sequences were sandwiched by evaluations of strings that never appeared as CS, but shared grammar construction rules. However, post-hoc tests indicated valence effects were restricted to participants classified as 'high awareness' or those who had been exposed to longer stimulus durations, suggesting resource-intense deliberations were central during evaluations. Qualitative awareness checks additionally showcased many participants had attributed valences to recurring elements across conditioned and evaluated exemplars. These limitations were collectively addressed in Experiment 2 (N2 = 140), where participants viewed Phoenician (/English) CS during conditioning but viewed English (/Phoenician) strings during evaluations, meaning no strings nor elements recurred between phases. We found credible valence effects across English and Phoenician strings, with the latter observed across all awareness categories. Because participants were unable to consciously specify any evaluative strategies while evaluating Phoenician strings, we speculate grammar construction rules (organizing relations) may have been non-consciously acquired during conditioning.

Unconscious Knowledge of Rewards Guides Instrumental Behaviors via Conscious Judgments

“…We employed two artificial grammars commonly used in AGL studies (e.g., Dienes & Scott, 2005;Reber, 1967; Figure 1), and used the same acquisition and test strings used in most AGL studies in which participants learn two grammars (Amd, 2021;Dienes et al, 1995;Norman et al, 2011Norman et al, , 2016Norman et al, , 2019Jurchis et al, 2020;Wan et al, 2008). The two grammars have the same possible starting and ending letters, and the length of the strings is balanced between grammars.…”

“…In this task, we expect participants to learn two artificial grammars and associate one of the two grammars with rewards. Our expectation is based on the previous studies showing that participants can learn, largely implicitly, two different grammars (Dienes et al 1995;Norman et al, 2011Norman et al, , 2016Norman et al, , 2019Wan et al, 2008) and also that they can associate one of the grammars with a positive and the other with a negative valence, in an evaluative conditioning paradigm (Amd, 2021;Jurchis et al, 2020).…”