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Publications (75)
The key elements for fear extinction learning are unexpected omissions of expected aversive events, which are considered to be rewarding. Given its reception of reward information, we tested the hypothesis that the cerebellum contributes to reward prediction error processing driving extinction learning via its connections with the ventral tegmental...
The key elements for fear extinction learning are unexpected omissions of expected aversive events, which are considered to be rewarding. Given its reception of reward information, we tested the hypothesis that the cerebellum contributes to reward prediction error processing driving extinction learning via its connections with the ventral tegmental...
The key elements for fear extinction learning are unexpected omissions of expected aversive events, which are considered to be rewarding. Given its reception of reward information, we tested the hypothesis that the cerebellum contributes to reward prediction error processing driving extinction learning via its connections with the ventral tegmental...
In one experiment with rats, we investigated the impact of a retrieval-extinction procedure on spontaneous recovery of operant responses. Four groups of rats were trained to press a lever for beer during the first phase of the experiment. In the second phase, lever pressing underwent extinction. Each extinction session was preceded by brief exposur...
It has been suggested that attention modulates the speed at which cues come to predict contingent outcomes, and that attention changes with the prediction errors generated by cues. Evidence for this interaction in humans is inconsistent, with divergent findings depending on whether attention was measured with eye fixations or learning speed. We inc...
We used an implicit learning paradigm to examine the acquisition of color-reward associations when colors were task-irrelevant and attention to color was detrimental to performance. Our task required a manual classification response to a shape target and a correct response was rewarded with either 1 or 10 cent. The amount of reward was contingent o...
Anxiety disorders are associated with a failure to sufficiently extinguish fear memories. The serotonergic system (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) with the 5-HT transporter (5-HTT, SERT) is strongly implicated in the regulation of anxiety and fear. In the present study, we examined the effects of SERT deficiency on fear extinction in a differential fear...
Extinction learning, the process of ceasing an acquired behavior in response to altered reinforcement contingencies, is not only essential for survival in a changing environment, but also plays a fundamental role in the treatment of pathological behaviors. During therapy and other forms of training involving extinction, subjects are typically expos...
We sought to provide evidence for a combined effect of two attentional mechanisms during associative learning. Participants' eye movements were recorded as they predicted the outcomes following different pairs of cues. Across the trials of an initial stage, a relevant cue in each pair was consistently followed by one of two outcomes, while an irrel...
In one experiment with rats, we examined whether positive affective states can serve as contexts in a between-subjects ABA renewal design using appetitive instrumental conditioning. Two groups of rats received training to press a lever for food where each acquisition session was preceded by administration of a tickling procedure (Context A) known t...
We investigated whether a sudden rise in prediction error widens an individual’s focus of attention by increasing ocular fixations on cues that otherwise tend to be ignored. To this end, we used a discrimination learning task including cues that were either relevant or irrelevant for predicting the outcomes. Half of participants experienced conting...
This review outlines behavioral and neurobiological aspects of extinction learning, with a focus on nonaversive experience. The extinction of acquired behavior is crucial for readaptation to our environment and plays a central role in therapeutic interventions. However, behavior that has been extinguished can reappear owing to context changes. In t...
In two human predictive learning experiments, we investigated the impact of adding or removing context components on extinction performance toward a cue. In each experiment, participants initially received repeated pairings of a cue and an outcome in a context composed of two distinctive components (context AB). Initial training was followed by a s...
Rats display a rich social behavioral repertoire. An important component of this repertoire is the emission of whistle-like calls in the ultrasonic range, so-called ultrasonic vocalizations (USV). Long low-frequency 22-kHz USV occur in aversive situations, including aggressive interactions, predator exposure, and electric shocks during fear conditi...
Flexibly integrating negative feedback while stably retaining valid associations are essential abilities for an individual who is learning and updating associations in new and changing contexts. The developmental trajectory of these faculties and their recruitment may explain the improvement in our learning capacities from childhood to adulthood as...
In 2 experiments, participants received a predictive learning task in which the presence of 1 or 2 food items signaled the onset or absence of stomachache in a hypothetical patient. Their task was to identify the cues that signaled the occurrence, or nonoccurrence of this ailment. The 2 groups in Experiment 1 and the single group in Experiment 2 re...
In one human predictive learning experiment, we demonstrated that an individual’s propensity for response recovery following discrimination reversal learning is stable over time. Participants received four sessions of training with the first three sessions being separated by one week each, while the last session was conducted after a delay of four...
In two instrumental conditioning experiments with rats, we examined the impacts of acquisition and extinction cues on ABC renewal of instrumental behavior. Animals were reinforced with food for lever pressing in one context, followed by extinction of the response in a second one. Presentations of a brief tone accompanied extinction in Experiment 1...
In the present study extinction and renewal of cognitive associations were assessed in two experiments in participants with focal and degenerative cerebellar disease. Using a predictive learning task, participants had to learn by trial and error the relationships between food items and the occurrence of stomach trouble in a hypothetical patient. In...
Cue competition refers to phenomena indicating that learning about the relationship between a cue and an outcome is influenced by learning about the predictive significance of other cues that are concurrently present. In two autoshaping experiments with pigeons, we investigated the strength of competition among cues for predictive value. In each ex...
An extended neural network is known to underlie extinction learning. As yet, comparatively little is known about the possible contribution of the cerebellum and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). In the present study, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) was used to provide further evidence that the dlPFC and the cerebellum are i...
A wealth of recent studies have demonstrated that predictive cues involved in a linearly solvable component discrimination gain associability in subsequent learning relative to non-predictive cues. In contrast, contradictory findings have been reported about the fate of cues involved in learning biconditional discriminations in which the cues are r...
In four experiments, participants were shown a sequence of pairs of pictures of food and asked to predict whether each pair signalled an allergic reaction in a hypothetical patient. The pairs of pictures were used to present two simple discriminations that differed in their outcome ratio. A rich discrimination, 3AX+ BX−, involved three trials in wh...
According to the attentional theory of context processing (ATCP), learning becomes context specific when acquired under conditions that promote attention toward contextual stimuli regardless of whether attention deployment is guided by learning experience or by other factors unrelated to learning. In one experiment with humans, we investigated whet...
Three experiments with rats investigated whether adding or removing elements of a context affects generalization of instrumental behavior. Each of the experiments used a free operant procedure. In Experiments 1 and 2, rats were trained to press a lever for food in a distinctive context. Then, transfer of lever pressing was tested in a context creat...
The attentional learning theory of Pearce and Hall (1980) predicts more attention to uncertain cues that have caused a high prediction error in the past. We examined how the cue-elicited pupil dilation during associative learning was linked to such error-driven attentional processes. In three experiments, participants were trained to acquire associ...
The present study explores the notion of an out-group fear learning bias that is characterized by a facilitated fear acquisition toward harm-doing out-group members. Participants were conditioned with two in-group and two out-group faces as conditioned stimuli. During acquisition, one in-group and one out-group face was paired with an aversive shoc...
Stimuli in our sensory environment differ with respect to their physical salience but moreover may acquire motivational salience by association with reward. If we repeatedly observed that reward is available in the context of a particular cue but absent in the context of another cue the former typically attracts more attention than the latter. Howe...
In human predictive learning, blocking, A+AB+, and a simple discrimination, UX+ VX-, result in a stronger response to the blocked, B, than the uninformative cue, X (where letters represent cues, and + and – represent different outcomes). In order to assess if these different treatments result in more attention being paid to blocked than uninformati...
In three experiments, we investigated the contextual control of attention in human discrimination learning. In each experiment, participants initially received discrimination training in which the cues from Dimension A were relevant in Context 1 but irrelevant in Context 2, whereas the cues from Dimension B were irrelevant in Context 1 but relevant...
In two experiments with rats, we investigated the effects of using multiple contexts during extinction on renewal of lever-pressing behavior. During the first phase of both experiments, rats were reinforced to press a lever for food in Context A. Then, responses underwent extinction. For half of the animals, extinction sessions were conducted in a...
We conducted a human fear conditioning experiment in which three different color cues were followed by an aversive electric shock on 0, 50, and 100% of the trials, and thus induced low (L), partial (P), and high (H) shock expectancy, respectively. The cues differed with respect to the strength of their shock association (L < P < H) and the uncertai...
Participants in two human goal-tracking experiments were simultaneously trained with Negative Patterning (NP) and Positive Patterning (PP) discriminations (A+, B+, AB-, C-, D-, CD+). Both elemental and configural models of associative learning predict a PP advantage, such that NP is solved less readily than PP. However, elemental models like the Un...
One experiment with rats explored whether an extinction-cue prevents the recovery of extinguished lever-pressing responses. Initially, rats were trained to perform one instrumental response (R1) for food in Context A, and a different instrumental response (R2) in Context B. Then, responses were extinguished each in the alternate context (R1 in Cont...
Associative learning refers to our ability to learn about regularities in our environment. When a stimulus is repeatedly followed by a specific outcome, we learn to expect the outcome in the presence of the stimulus. We are also able to modify established expectations in the face of disconfirming information (the stimulus is no longer followed by t...
It is widely held that the extinction of a conditioned response is more context specific than its initial acquisition. One proposed explanation is that context serves to disambiguate the meaning of a stimulus. Using a procedure that equated the learning histories of the contexts, we show that the memory of an appetitive Pavlovian association can be...
In two human predictive-learning experiments, we investigated the effects of extinction in multiple contexts on the rate of extinction and the strength of response recovery. In each experiment, participants initially received acquisition training with a target cue in one context, followed by extinction either in a different context (extinction in a...
Besides visual salience and observers' current intention, prior learning experience may influence deployment of visual attention. Associative learning models postulate that observers pay more attention to stimuli previously experienced as reliable predictors of specific outcomes. To investigate the impact of learning experience on deployment of att...
To cope with the huge amount of incoming information, the visual system has to assign priorities to each stimulus in the visual field. Which stimulus is prioritized depends on bottom-up factors that are defined by physical properties inherent of the visual stimuli, e.g., local feature contrast, and top-down factors that are set ’in the observer’, e...
Extinction learning provides the ability to flexibly adapt to new contingencies by learning to inhibit previously acquired associations in a context-dependent manner. The neural networks underlying extinction learning were mostly studied in rodents using fear extinction paradigms. To uncover invariant properties of the neural basis of extinction le...
Whereas acquisition of new associations is considered largely independent of the context, context dependency is a hallmark of extinction of the learned associations. The hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex are known to be involved in context processing during extinction learning and recall. Although the cerebellum has known functional and anatomi...
In two predictive-learning experiments, we investigated the role of the informational value of contexts for the formation of context-specific extinction learning. The contexts were each composed of two elements from two dimensions, A and B. In Phase 1 of each experiment, participants received acquisition training with a target cue Z in context A1B1...
The majority of experiments exploring context-dependent extinction learning employ Pavlovian fear conditioning in rodents. Since mechanisms of appetitive and aversive learning are known to differ at the neuronal level, we sought to investigate extinction learning in an appetitive setting. Working with pigeons, we established a within-subject ABA re...
A central feature of extinction learning is its context-dependency. Changes of the context of extinction usually result in a disruption of extinction performance – the initially learned behaviour recovers (renewal; e. g., Bouton & Bolles, 1979). To explain the strong context-dependency of extinction, current theoretical accounts assume that the une...
Recent research demonstrated that reactivation of a consolidated memory by a reminder-cue makes the memory labile again. Within a specific time-window of reconsolidation, the old memory can be modified through the integration of new information. We examined whether reconsolidation can decrease recovery of extinguished performance in the form of a r...
In each of three experiments, a single group of participants received a sequence of trials involving pictures of a variety of foods presented individually or in pairs. Participants were required to predict in which trials the food would lead to a hypothetical allergic reaction. The different trials involved blocking, A+ AX+, and a simple discrimina...
In four human learning experiments (Pavlovian skin conductance, causal learning, speeded classification task), we evaluated several associative learning theories that assume either an elemental (modified unique cue model and Harris' model) or a configural (Pearce's configural theory and an extension of it) form of stimulus processing. The experimen...
Parameter selection for simulations of the elemental models (modified unique cue model and Harris’ model) and configural models (Pearce’s configural theory and extended configural theory) for the two discrimination problems A/B/C+, AB/BC/AC+ vs. ABC- and A+, BC+ vs. ABC-.
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The renewal effect describes the reoccurrence of a previously extinguished response in situations where the context of extinction differs from that of acquisition, thus illustrating the context-dependency of extinction learning. A number of studies on contextual fear extinction have implicated hippocampus and vmPFC in processing and retrieval of co...
Recovery effects which can frequently be observed after a seemingly successful extinction procedure indicate that extinction does not lead to an erasure of the memory trace. Investigating factors which modulate the retrieval of extinction memory is highly relevant for basic science and clinical applications alike. This study investigated the effect...
Are we able to pay attention to a stimulus in one situation and to ignore the same stimulus in a different situation? According to a number of influential theories of learning and attention (e. g. Kruschke, 1992; Mackintosh, 1975), the answer to this question is “No”. These theories assume that the associability of a stimulus remains unaltered by t...
In two predictive-learning experiments, we investigated the role of the informational value of contexts for the formation of context-dependent behavior. During Phase 1 of each experiment, participants received either a conditional discrimination in which contexts were relevant (Group Relevant) or a simple discrimination in which contexts were irrel...
Renewal refers to the recovery of acquisition performance when contextual stimuli having been present during extinction are changed. From a practical standpoint, renewal is important as a model for relapse after psychotherapeutic treatments. We examined, whether a manipulation of the attention paid to context stimuli has an impact on the strength o...
In 3 human predictive learning experiments, we investigated whether the allocation of attention can come under the control of contextual stimuli. In each experiment, participants initially received a conditional discrimination for which one set of cues was trained as relevant in Context 1 and irrelevant in Context 2, and another set was relevant in...
Renewal refers to the recovery of an extinguished response due to a change of the contextual cues present during extinction. Both extinction and renewal have been widely investigated because its value as a model for relapse after therapy. This viewpoint have led to a research field regarding the possible procedures to prevent relapse (response reco...
Experiment 1 compared the acquisition of a feature-positive and a feature-negative discrimination in humans. In the former, an outcome was signaled by two stimuli together, but not by one of these stimuli alone. In the latter, the outcome was signaled by one stimulus alone, but not by two stimuli together. Using a within-group design, the experimen...
The advantage in learning after an intradimensional shift rather than an extradimensional shift has been widely used as a behavioural marker of attentional changes during discrimination learning in different fields of neuroscientific study. However, some of the factors assumed to guide these attentional changes have not been completely disentangled...
Discrimination learning is thought to involve changes in attention to the stimuli present during training. Take, for instance, a discrimination such as AX+, AY+, BX-, BY-. In this case, A and B are consistently followed by a specific outcome, whereas X and Y have each an inconsistent reinforcement history. Many theories of learning and attention (e...
Renewal refers to the recovery of acquisition performance when contextual cues having been present during extinction are changed. We examined the role of attention paid to the context of extinction for the formation of renewal. A within-subject procedure of ABA renewal was implemented: In Phase 1 all participants were trained with Z+ trials in Cont...
In a human predictive learning experiment, the strengths of ABA, ABC, and AAB recovery effects after discrimination reversal learning were compared. Initially, a discrimination between two stimuli (X+, Y−) was trained in Context A. During Phase 2, participants received discrimination reversal training (X−, Y+) either in Context A (Group AAB) or in...
In two causal learning experiments with human participants, the authors compared various associative theories that assumed either elemental (unique cue, modified unique cue, replaced elements model, and Harris' model) or configural processing of stimuli (Pearce's theory and a modification of it). The authors used modified patterning problems initia...
In 3 human predictive learning experiments, the authors examined contextual control of responding in discrimination reversal learning. In Phase 1, a discrimination between 2 stimuli (A+, B-) was trained in Context 1. During Phase 2, participants received discrimination reversal training (A-, B+) in Context 2. Testing occurred in Context 1 and Conte...
The mechanisms proposed to account for contextual control of performance can be divided into two main classes differing in their assumptions about the conditions required for the development of contextual modulation. The first view claims that contextual control is formed under exactly the same conditions that affect the response eliciting property...
Participants were shown A+ and C- trials followed by AB+ and CD+ trials. These trials were embedded in a causal learning task in which participants had to learn either the relationship between different foods and allergic reactions or the relationship between different stocks and an increase in the stock market index. The authors orthogonally varie...
In two conditioning experiments with humans, we found that participants’ prior experience exerted considerable influence on later learning of configural discrimination problems. Prior experience was manipulated by pre-training participants before the main acquisition stage. They either received a discrimination problem that encouraged an elemental...
