Summation in autoshaping

Rescorla, Robert A.; Coldwell, Susan E.

doi:10.3758/bf03198928

Cited by 86 publications

(131 citation statements)

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“…elements leads this model in general to anticipate greater summation when the components of a compound are drawn from the same, rather than different, stimulus modalities. That prediction seems inconsistent both with available published results in autoshaping (Rescorla & Coldwell, 1995) and eyelid conditioning (Kehoe, Horne, Horne, & Macrae, 1994) and with unpublished data from our laboratory using the present preparation.…”

Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 56%

“…However, there are some instances in which summation does not seem so readily observed. For instance, both Aydin and Pearce (1995) and Rescorla and Coldwell (1995) have recently reported difficulty observing summation with localized visual components in an autoshaping preparation with pigeons. That result seems difficult for an elemental theory but more congenial to a configural account.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Summation: Assessment of a configural theory

Rescorla

1997

Animal Learning & Behavior

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In five experiments, rats were given Pavlovian pairings of auditory and visual stimuli with delivery of food pellets. Experiment 1 found greater responding to an AB compound after training with the individual A and B stimuli, compared with responding both to the A and B elements and to a separately trained CD compound. Experiment 2 found this enhanced responding to depend on the associative strengths of A and B. In Experiment 3, responding was greater to a CD compound than to the other compounds after an AB-, AD+, BC+ training procedure. In Experiment 4, responding to an AB compound was greater than that to the elements after A was reinforced on a 100% schedule and B on a 50% schedule. In Experiment 5, responding to an ACcompound was greater than that to either A or C after an AB+ , CD+ , A-training procedure. A configural theory, such as that proposed by Pearce (1987), anticipates sununation in none of these procedures, unless the conditioned context is assumed to have a salience greater than zero. In order to predict summation in Experiments 3, 4, and 5, a context salience greater than that of the elements must be assumed. However, such an assumption also anticipates that extinction of a 100% stimulus should eliminate responding to a 500A! stimulus. The results of Experiment 3 contradicted that prediction. These results conform better to the expectations of elemental models of conditioning.A problem ofcontinuing interest in associative learning is that of specifying the behavior to a compound stimulus, AB, in terms of the behavior to its components, A and B. One can identify two broad classes oftheories that attempt to deal with this problem.What has sometimes been call the "elemental" approach focuses on the compound as composed of its constituent elements. According to this approach, the compound stimulus consists primarily of its component parts and the associative strength ofthe compound is derived by some rule for summing the associative strengths of those components. This historically popular view has been incorporated into many theories oflearning (e.g., Hull, 1943;.A less popular, but attractive, approach has been called the "configural" approach. This approach views each compound as a new stimulus, distinct from its elements. Responding to that compound then depends on its receiving generalization based on its similarity to the trained elements. Although historical versions ofthis approach have sometimes left that similarity poorly defined, a recently proposed configural theory specifies the element/compound relation in terms of an explicit generalization rule linking them (Pearce, 1987(Pearce, , 1994.Each of these approaches has its attractions. The elemental approach offers a simple, analytic basis for building up a compound from its component parts. It can provide a natural account of many phenomena that result from compound presentation, such as summation, blocking, and over-

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Section: Resultscontrasting

confidence: 56%

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confidence: 99%

Summation: Assessment of a configural theory

Rescorla

1997

Animal Learning & Behavior

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“…However, there are also numerous reported failures to observe summation in Pavlovian conditioning paradigms. Most of these failures have occurred in autoshaping experiments with pigeons (e.g., Aydin & Pearce, 1995, 1997Rescorla & Coldwell, 1995). Nonetheless, both successes and failures to observe summation have been reported in other paradigms, such as the conditioned nictitating membrane response in rabbits (Kehoe, Horne, Horne, & Macrae, 1994) and the conditioned magazine approach with rats (Pearce, George, & Aydin, 2002;Rescorla, 1997;Thein, Westbrook, & Harris, 2008).…”

Section: Summationmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…That is, although the stimuli did not overlap spatially, their proximity may still have effected some normalization within the pigeons' visual systems. Indeed, these stimuli may have affected one another's detectability at a more peripheral level if, by looking at one stimulus, the pigeons' gaze was directed away from other concurrently presented of CSs from the same modality do not produce more responding than do the individual CSs themselves, this could explain the many failures to observe summation in autoshaping with pigeons (Aydin & Pearce, 1995, 1997Rescorla & Coldwell, 1995), because the CSs used in those experiments were from the same (visual) modality. In light of this, Wagner (2003) has specified operations in the replaced elements model that capture this relation (see also Myers et al, 2001).…”

Section: Activation Of Us Elementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An attention-modulated associative network

Harris

Livesey

2010

Learning & Behavior

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We present an elemental model of associative learning that describes interactions between stimulus elements as a process of competitive normalization. Building on the assumptions laid out in Harris (2006), stimuli are represented as an array of elements that compete for attention according to the strength of their input. Elements form associations among each other according to temporal correlations in their activation but restricted by their connectivity. The model moves beyond its predecessor by specifying excitatory, inhibitory, and attention processes for each element in real time and describing their interaction as a form of suppressive gain control. Attention is formalized in this model as a network of mutually inhibitory units that moderate the activation of stimulus elements by controlling the level to which the elements are suppressed by their own inhibitory processes. The model is applied to a range of complex discriminations and related phenomena that have been taken as evidence for configural-learning processes.

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“…The failure of sign tracking in pigeons to routinely show summation is well known, but poorly understood (e.g., Rescorla & Coldwell, 1995). One possibility is that there is perceptual interaction among the stimuli of a compound, such that each element brings less than its full complement of strength to the compound.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating conditioning of related and unrelated stimuli using a compound test

Rescorla

2008

Learning & Behavior

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Summation in autoshaping

Cited by 86 publications

References 19 publications

Summation: Assessment of a configural theory

Summation: Assessment of a configural theory

An attention-modulated associative network

Evaluating conditioning of related and unrelated stimuli using a compound test

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