Relative validity of contextual and discrete cues.

Abstract

Contextual conditioning during relative validity training was explored in 3 experiments that used an appetitive Pavlovian conditioning preparation with rats. Magazine entries were the conditioned response. In Experiment 1, true-discrimination (TD: AX+, BX-) training generated weaker conditioning of X than did pseudodiscrimination (PD: AX+/-, BX+/-) training. The context showed a similar relative validity effect. Also, both PD training and simple partial reinforcement (X+/-) reduced contextual conditioning more than did unsignaled food, a demonstration of relative validity using partial reinforcement. Experiments 2 and 3 used within-subject and between-subjects designs, respectively, and showed that relative validity was determined by the summation of differences in conditioning to both the common element (X) and the context. Our results are consistent with an attentional model or with a computational comparator model but not with the Rescorla-Wagner (R. A. Rescorla & A. R. Wagner, 1972) model.

The effect of the amount of blocking cue training on blocking of appetitive conditioning in mice

“…Therefore, it is not clear what the cause of increased pre-CS responding might be. Indeed, a study examining another cue competition effect, relative validity, found a result that is the opposite of this effect ( Murphy et al, 2001 ). Thus, rats that received a discrimination between compounds AX+ and BX− (in which A, B and X were discrete cues) showed weaker responding to X and during the pre-CS interval compared to a group that received partial reinforcement of the compounds, AX+/− and BX+/−, suggesting that A and B had reduced learning of X and the contextual cues.…”

A comparative approach to cue competition with one and two strong predictors

“…Clearly, because the target stimu-lus X is always present, it provides an analogue to the context and provides a number of advantages in terms of assessing behavior controlled by it. Elsewhere we have taken advantage of this analogy (Murphy, Baker, & Fouquet, 2001b; see also Murphy & Baker, 2004).…”

Roles of context in acquisition of human instrumental learning: Implications for the understanding of the mechanisms underlying context-switch effects

“…From this perspective, switching the context leads to a decrease in the associative strength accrued by the new stimulus compound (CS+New Context) presented at testing, and explains the decrease in conditioned responding related to the context switch (e.g., León et al, 2011;León, Callejas-Aguilera, & Rosas, 2012;Moreno-Fernández, Abad, Ramos-Álvarez, & Rosas, 2011;Murphy, Baker, & Fouquet, 2001). For instance, León et al (2011) explored the role of the length of training on the context-switch effect within a human predictive learning task.…”