Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

Symmetrical “super learning”: Enhancing causal learning using a bidirectional probabilistic outcome.
In a learning environment, with multiple predictive cues for a single outcome, cues interfere with or enhance each other during the acquisition process (e.g., Baker et al., 1993). Previous experiments have focused on cues that signal the presence or absence of binary outcomes. This introduces a perceptual and perhaps motivational asymmetry between excitatory and inhibitory learning. Here, using a bidirectional outcome, we asked whether learning about both generative (incremental positive outcome) and preventative (incremental negative outcome) causal cues show similar enhancement effects in opposite directions. In three experiments with humans using predictive learning tasks, participants (N = 133) were exposed to probabilistic predictive cues for opposite polarity events. Generative cues caused an increase in outcome likelihood, while preventative cues decreased it. An analysis of explicit predictive ratings found evidence for symmetrical learning and enhanced learning for both generative and preventative cues. The results are discussed in relation to super learning, an effect derived from theories of competitive learning based on error correction and theories of contrasting probability estimates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Novelty mismatch as a determinant of latent inhibition.
Latent inhibition refers to the observation, made in both human and nonhuman animals, that learning about the relationship between a stimulus and an outcome progresses more rapidly when the stimulus is novel compared to when the stimulus has been rendered familiar by preexposure. Three experiments with human participants show that this effect can be reversed to reveal faster learning about a familiar than a novel stimulus, by manipulating the novelty/familiarity of the experimental context. In each experiment, during Stage 1, a preexposed stimulus was rendered familiar by being repeatedly presented within a stream of distractor letters that constituted the experimental context. In a subsequent training stage, participants were required to respond to a target outcome that was preceded by the familiar stimulus on some trials and a novel stimulus on others. These trials were also presented within a stream of contextual distractor stimuli. The results showed that during the training stage, learning about the familiar stimulus proceeded more successfully than the novel stimulus when the distractor stimuli sustained novelty during training (Experiments 1–3), but that this effect could be reverted to latent inhibition when the distractor stimuli sustained familiarity during training (Experiments 2 and 3). The results are in keeping with a novelty-mismatch analysis of latent inhibition, and a novelty-mediated generalization explanation of the results is proposed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Extinction induced representational change.
Extinction may alter the representation of a cue (e.g., it becomes less salient). To assess that idea, three groups learned to suppress mouse clicking in a video game in negative-patterning (X+/Y+/XY−) and positive-patterning (Z+/W+/ZW++) discriminations followed by extinction of X and Z. The negative-patterning discrimination should depend on a configural cue that is dependent on the representation of X and Y. Removal of the excitatory influence of X should further reduce responding to XY. In contrast, if extinction alters the representation of X, the original XY configural cue supporting the discrimination should also be changed, affecting inhibitory control, increasing responding to XY. Following patterning, groups received extinction in the same context as training (Ext A), a different context (Ext B), or received no extinction (no extinction). All stimuli were tested in Context A. Group no extinction showed negative patterning; suppression to X and Y was greater than to XY while suppression to Z, W, and ZW was equally strong. In group Ext A extinction reduced suppression to X, increased suppression to XY, reversed the X/XY discrimination, and weakened the Y/XY discrimination. Extinction of Z reduced suppression to Z with no effect on W or ZW. Group Ext B showed renewal of X and a renewal of the X/XY and Y/XY discriminations. Results suggest some form of representational change in X occurred during extinction disrupting the original XY configural cue that was dependent on that representation. Findings are discussed with respect to theories of associative learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)
Explicit and implicit intermixed–blocked effects in the absence of instructions requiring the search for differences between visual stimuli.
In three experiments, participants were asked to mentally count how many target stimuli appeared in a sequence of presentations, without informing them that there were two types of stimuli (AX and BX) with a specific difference. Some participants received intermixed AX and BX presentations (INT groups), while others received the presentations in blocks (BLK groups). In all three experiments, the INT group showed a greater ability to differentiate the stimuli in a posttest compared to the BLK group. In Experiment 1a, where AX and BX were drawings of plants that differed in the number of petals, the improvement in differentiation was accompanied by the ability to identify the specific difference. However, in Experiments 1b and 2, where AX and BX were robots with a more subtle difference in eye separation, the improvement in differentiation occurred without participants being able to indicate what the difference between the stimuli was. These results suggest that intermixed preexposure can generate, without the need for initial instructions to look for differences between stimuli, both explicit (Experiment 1a) and implicit (Experiments 1b and 2) beneficial effects on stimulus differentiation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition - Vol 51, Iss 1