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Arousal, working memory, and conscious awareness in contingency learning
Abstract
There are wide individual differences in the ability to detect a stimulus contingency embedded in a complex paradigm. The present study used a cognitive masking paradigm to better understand individual differences related to contingency learning. Participants were assessed on measures of electrodermal arousal and on working memory capacity before engaging in the contingency learning task. Contingency awareness was assessed both by trial-by-trial verbal reports obtained during the task and by a short post-task recognition questionnaire. Participants who became aware had fewer non-specific skin conductance responses and tended to score higher on a digit span assessment. Skin conductance level was not significantly lower in the aware group than in the unaware group. These findings are consistent with studies showing that lower arousal and greater cognitive processing capacity facilitate conscious perception of a greater breadth of information within a scene or a task.
... Cognitive factors such as working memory have been proposed as a potential mediator (Baas, 2013;Boddez et al., 2012). Working memory is positively related to awareness of CS-US contingencies (Cosand et al., 2008), with an inverse relationship between contingency awareness and overgeneralized fear responding. Although failing to show any relationship between trait-anxiety and fear learning deficits, a recent study did find that attentional control, thought to be related to working memory, was associated with awareness of CS-US contingencies (Baas, 2013). ...
... Given the success of the Processing Efficiency and Attentional Control theories in describing anxiety from a cognitive perspective (Chuderski, 2015;Owens et al., 2008;Owens et al., 2014), as well as the role working memory has been shown to play in facilitating associative learning (Carter et al., 2003;Cosand et al., 2008;Stout et al., 2018), it is reasonable to propose that the relationship between anxiety and fear learning may also be subject to a cognitive intermediary such as working memory capacity. Although working memory has been mentioned in previous studies as a potential explanatory mechanism (Baas, 2013;Boddez et al., 2012), the precise nature of its role has not yet been described. ...
Anxiety disorders are characterised by the perception of fear and threat in the presence of stimuli that are neutral or ambiguous. Attempts in previous research to explain the relationship between anxiety and fear learning have been inconsistent, possibly due to the influence of an unmeasured mechanism that mediates the relationship between them. Working memory capacity has been suggested as one such mechanism. The current study investigated the influence of anxiety-based individual differences upon associative fear learning, while accounting for individual differences in working memory. We hypothesised that individuals high in both anxiety and working memory would show unimpaired fear learning whereas individuals high in anxiety and low in working memory would exhibit dysfunctional fear learning. Sixty participants completed a battery of anxiety and working memory tests, as well as a fear conditioning experiment that tested for blocking, conditioned inhibition and fear discrimination. We found that anxious individuals were more likely to show impaired fear discrimination only if they also had a low working memory capacity. Furthermore, anxiety was particularly associated with poorer learning about safety cues. Such relationships were not observed for blocking and conditioned inhibition. These results suggest that the relationship between anxiety and fear learning is complex and warrants further investigation of the potential mediating role of higher-order cognitive faculties.
... These are important considerations, also in the context of classical conditioning. Cosand et al. (2008) and Baas (2013) showed that awareness of CS+/US associations relies partly on working-memory capacity and attentional control. In an elegant study, Raes et al. (2009) revealed reduced extinction of CS+/US associations under high vs. low cognitive load, but high cognitive load interrupted extinction more in low-than highanxious participants. ...
... One option is that the better participants were at differentiating the various faces, the better they performed at the CS-US matching task. Interestingly, enhanced contingency awareness has been associated with increased working-memory capacity, and greater attentional control (Cosand et al., 2008;Baas, 2013). Highly (socially) trait-anxious participants showed enhanced visual working-memory capacity, unless confronted with distractors (Moriya and Sugiura, 2012). ...
Relative to healthy controls, anxiety-disorder patients show anomalies in classical conditioning that may either result from, or provide a risk factor for, clinically relevant anxiety. Here, we investigated whether healthy participants with enhanced anxiety vulnerability show abnormalities in a challenging affective-conditioning paradigm, in which many stimulus-reinforcer associations had to be acquired with only few learning trials. Forty-seven high and low trait-anxious females underwent MultiCS conditioning, in which 52 different neutral faces (CS+) were paired with an aversive noise (US), while further 52 faces (CS−) remained unpaired. Emotional learning was assessed by evaluative (rating), behavioral (dot-probe, contingency report), and neurophysiological (magnetoencephalography) measures before, during, and after learning. High and low trait-anxious groups did not differ in evaluative ratings or response priming before or after conditioning. High trait-anxious women, however, were better than low trait-anxious women at reporting CS+/US contingencies after conditioning, and showed an enhanced prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation towards CS+ in the M1 (i.e., 80–117 ms) and M170 time intervals (i.e., 140–160 ms) during acquisition. These effects in MultiCS conditioning observed in individuals with elevated trait anxiety are consistent with theories of enhanced conditionability in anxiety vulnerability. Furthermore, they point towards increased threat monitoring and detection in highly trait-anxious females, possibly mediated by alterations in visual working memory.
... The difference in SPN, an index of anticipation, indicated that only aware participants varied their expectancy of threat and safety. SPN is typically largest at electrode Cz before the presentation of an expected stimulus (Brown et al. 2008), which is where we found the interaction effect to be significant. However, the interaction effect did not reach the .05 ...
Contingency awareness refers to an observer’s ability to identify the association between a conditioned (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US). A widely held belief in human fear conditioning is that this form of associative learning may occur independently of contingency awareness. To test this hypothesis, in this preregistered study ( https://osf.io/vywq7 ), we recorded electroencephalography (EEG) during a task, where participants were presented with compounds of words (from two semantic categories) and tactile stimulation, followed by either a neutral sound (US-) or a loud noise (US+). Based on interviews, participants were divided into an aware (N=50) and an unaware (N=31) group. Only the aware group showed signs of learning, as expressed in larger stimulus-preceding negativity developing before US+ and a stronger theta response to vibrations predicting US+. The aware group also showed stronger alpha and beta suppression around the vibrations and a weaker theta response to US+, possibly indicating heightened attention to the cue and the violation/confirmation of expectation. Personality tests showed that elevated anxiety, neuroticism, higher intolerance of uncertainty, or harm avoidance are not predictive to the acquisition of contingency awareness. Our findings support the notion that fear conditioning, as reflected in cortical measures, cannot occur without contingency awareness.
... For example, a large working memory capacity may contribute to increased awareness and improvement in VSL. Some previous studies did not find any relationship between individual working memory capacity and conscious awareness (Beanland & Chan, 2016;Cosand et al., 2008;Kreitz et al., 2016) and any correlation between (both auditory and visual) statistical learning and working memory . However, Wilsch et al. (2015) showed the effects of temporal expectation on working memory performance. ...
It has been reported that visual statistical learning (VSL) is facilitated in skewed distributions. However, it remains unclear whether enhancement of VSL in Zipfian distributions is due to consciousness of the regularities presented at high frequency. This study addressed this issue. We measured participants’ subjective confidence in regularities and awareness of regularities during familiarization by combining a previously reported procedure for VSL with a postdecision wagering task and posttest questionnaire. The results demonstrated that Zipfian distribution enhanced not only VSL but also metacognitive sensitivity, particularly for high-frequency regularities, as the effects of consciousness on VSL were limited to high-frequency regularities. Moreover, the results indicated that awareness during familiarization mediated VSL enhancement in the Zipfian distribution. These results suggest that VSL for events with high-frequency regularities plays an important role in the cognition of events with low-frequency regularities via awareness.
... It represents a control system with limits on both its storage and processing capabilities (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). It is also believed to be accessible to conscious awareness (Baddeley, 1993;Cosand et al., 2008;Nervous et al., 1998). Procedural memory is less accessible to conscious awareness, enables gradual learning of habits and skills and refers to unconscious memory and to the transmission of information related to automatic behavior (Fabio, 2017;Fabio, Castriciano, & Rondanini, 2015;Martino, Caprì, Castriciano, & Fabio, 2017;Mochizuki-Kawai, 2008). ...
The aim of this study was to test Oberauer's independence hypothesis in young adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and typically developing ones (TD). More precisely, the objective was to verify if the manipulation of two memory systems influences the other in ADHD and TD individuals in a different way. Fifty-nine participants, 35 with ADHD and 24 TD, matched for age, gender and IQ, participated in this study. A complex span task paradigm was used. Participants were asked to remember a series of letters (recalling) while performing a concurrent response selection task after each letter presentation. Results do not confirm the independence hypothesis, suggesting that both working and procedural memory systems share common resources, and the manipulation of each of the two systems influences the other in the same way, both in TD and ADHD participants. ADHD participants showed deficits in both procedural and working memory.
... Likewise, can the absence of a relation between working memory and general PIT be interpreted as evidence that more automatic processes are responsible for this form of PIT? Although a number of studies go along with both speculations 12,15,18,30,34,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45] , evidence is still indirect and careful consideration should be taken in drawing such conclusions. In the present study, for example, a limitation is represented by the presence of a smaller effect size for the general PIT (part. ...
Information gathered via Pavlovian and Instrumental learning can be integrated to guide behavior, in a phenomenon experimentally known as Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer (PIT). In particular, in appetitive PIT, a reward-associated cue is able to enhance the instrumental response previously associated with the same (outcome-specific PIT), or a similar (general PIT), reward. The PIT effect is increasingly investigated for its numerous implications in clinical contexts as well as daily life situations. Nevertheless, the precise mechanism behind it is not yet clear. The relation between the PIT effect and high-level cognitive abilities-like working memory-is still unknown, but potentially relevant to unveil its functioning. The present study aims to examine the precise relationship between individual differences in working memory and the two forms of PIT effect, namely outcome-specific and general. For this purpose, 100 participants underwent a classical PIT paradigm. Results showed a relationship between individual working memory and outcome-specific PIT, but not general PIT. Importantly, the role of working memory was not related to the acquisition of the learning contingencies, but rather linked to an imbalance between congruent and incongruent choices. The results are discussed in terms of the adaptive and maladaptive implications for human behavior.
... If hippocampus/parahippocampus and prefrontal cortex support contingency awareness, the memory functions they subserve also might differ between aware and unaware subjects. There is some evidence that supports this notion, with one study showing a trend toward higher working memory capacity in aware compared to unaware subjects (Cosand et al., 2008). This is consistent with the fact that executing a working memory task during conditioning impairs contingency awareness (Tabbert, Stark, Kirsch, & Vaitl, 2006), an effect that is more pronounced in hippocampus-dependent procedures (trace conditioning) compared to procedures that do not rely on the hippocampus (delay conditioning) (Carter et al., 2003). ...
Contingency awareness during conditioning describes the phenomenon of becoming consciously aware of the association between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US). Despite the fact that contingency awareness is necessary for associative learning in some conditioning paradigms, its role in contextual fear conditioning, a variant that uses a context-CS (CTX) instead of a cue, has not been characterized thus far. We investigated if contingency awareness is a prerequisite for contextual fear conditioning and if subjects classified as aware differ from unaware subjects on a hemodynamic, autonomic, and behavioral level. We used a computer-generated picture context as CTX and slightly painful electric stimulation as US while we recorded brain responses by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and obtained skin conductance responses (SCR) and verbal ratings of emotional valence and arousal. SCR analyses revealed that only aware subjects became conditioned to the US-associated CTX (CTX+). Brain activity related to the CTX+ was more strongly pronounced in fear-associated areas like the insula in the aware relative to the unaware group. Finally, the hippocampus was functionally connected to the cingulate cortex and posterior medial frontal gyrus in aware subjects relative to unaware subjects. These task-related differential connectivity patterns suggest that information exchange between the hippocampus and regions involved in the expression of conditioned fear and decision uncertainty is crucial for the acquisition of contingency knowledge. This study demonstrates the importance of contingency awareness for contextual fear conditioning and points to the hippocampus as a potential mediator for contingency learning in contextual learning.
... dual-task) as considerably more stressful than low neurotic ones so that their arousal levels are increased [4,6,12]. Importantly, this high level of arousal impairs performance, i.e. the mental processes are working less efficiently [4,35]. ...
It is known that neuroticism impairs cognitive performance mostly in difficult tasks, but not so much in easier tasks. One pervasive situation of this type is multitasking, in which the combination of two simple tasks creates a highly demanding dual-task, and consequently high neurotics show higher dual-task costs than low neurotics. However, the functional neuroanatomical correlates of these additional performance impairments in high neurotics are unknown. To test for this, we assessed brain activity by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 17 low and 15 high neurotics while they were performing a demanding dual-task and the less demanding component tasks as single-tasks. Behavioural results showed that performance (response times and error rates) was lower in the dual-task than in the single-tasks (dual-task costs), and that these dual-task costs were significantly higher in high neurotics. Imaging data showed that high neurotics showed less dual-task specific activation in lateral (mainly middle frontal gyrus) and medial prefrontal cortices. We conclude that high levels of neuroticism impair behavioural performance in demanding tasks, and that this impairment is accompanied by reduced activation of the task-associated brain areas.
Deficient fear conditioning leads to maladaptive contextual anxiety as predicting danger is a key factor in regulating anxiety. A virtual reality conditioning task was used to evaluate cue learning and contextual anxiety with fear-potentiated startle and subjective fear in two experiments. In Experiment 1, failure to condition to a cue resulted in a constant state of context anxiety (subjective fearfulness and startle). Trait anxiety was unrelated to learning cue contingencies but the participants who failed to learn scored lower on a self-report measure of attentional control. Part of the group that learned the cue contingency failed to deduce safety of the context and hence did not reduce their contextual anxiety. Experiment 2 specifically focused on isolating this process and demonstrated an inverse association between trait anxiety and adaptive modulation of contextual anxiety. In conclusion, predicting threat aids in but not automatically implies successful regulation of contextual anxiety. High trait anxiety may increase risk of deficient modulation of contextual anxiety.
The study of the mechanism that detects the contingency between events. in both humans and non-human animals, is a matter of considerable research activity. Two broad categories of explanations of the acquisition of contingency information have received extensive evaluation: rule-based models and associative models. This article assesses the two categories of models for human contingency judgments. The data reveal systematic departures in contingency judgments from the predictions of rule-based models. Recent studies indicate that a contiguity model of Pavlovian conditioning is a useful heuristic for conceptualizing human contingency judgments.
Definition of insight / alternative perspectives on insight [the business-as-usual perspective, the Wizard Merlin perspective, the prepared-mind perspective] / past studies of the preparation phase / past studies of the incubation phase / expansion of the prepared-mind perspective / studies of impasses and opportunistic assimilation / toward an information-processing model of insight.
This study examined how people detect and assess the strength of contingent relationships between pairs of events. Some researchers have suggested that contingency learning is analogous to classical conditioning and that contingency judgment is based on psychological associations formed during learning. Others have rejected the associative account in favor of a rule-based account involving higher level statistical and causal reasoning. The results of 4 experiments in which college-student participants performed a simulated medical-judgment task, showed that the rule-based account does not provide a sufficient explanation of cue-interaction effects in contingency learning and judgment. Elements of the associative account are needed to explain the entire range of contingency judgment phenomena. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Evaluated the construct validity of 4 postconditioning questionnaires using 120 adult Ss within the context of a masked GSR classical conditioning paradigm. A short recognition questionnaire was found to be a more valid and sensitive measure of awareness than short recall, long recall, or long recognition questionnaires. No evidence of unaware differential conditioning was obtained. However, due to inferential limitations associated with all postconditioning questionnaires, it is recommended that future research develop measures of awareness which can be obtained concurrently with the measures of conditioning. (18 ref.)
Presented a discrimination GSR classical conditioning paradigm embedded within a masking task to 56 college students. The probability that Ss would become aware of the relation between the CS and the UCS was experimentally manipulated using verbal instructions. In addition, technique was devised which permitted the measurement of awareness concurrent with the measurement of conditioning. The CS-UCS interval was divided into 2 subintervals: a short-latency orienting response (OR) interval and a longer-latency anticipatory response (AR) interval. Results reveal that GSR discrimination conditioning in the OR and AR interval occurred (a) only among individual Ss who were aware, (b) only among groups of Ss for whom the probability of awareness was experimentally facilitated, and (c) only at the time that awareness was expressed. Data are consistent with the hypothesis that awareness of the CS-UCS relation is a necessary but not sufficient factor in GSR discrimination classical conditioning. (16 ref)
Presents a model to relate the personality dimensions of introversion–extraversion, achievement motivation, and anxiety to efficient cognitive performance. It is demonstrated how these personality dimensions in combination with situational moderators (e.g., success, failure, time pressure, incentives, time of day, stimulant drugs) affect the motivational constructs of arousal and effort. A general information-processing model that accounts for the systematic effects of these motivational states on certain task components (sustained information transfer and some aspect of short-term memory) is proposed. Empirical generalizations about task components in a structural model are combined, and testable predictions that differentiate alternative motivational hypotheses are derived. (132 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The ability of anxious and control participants to learn about signals for danger and safety was tested within an autonomic conditioned inhibition (A+/AB-) procedure. Only participants who could verbalize the differential contingencies between the stimuli and shock (aware participants) showed discrimination on electrodermal and shock expectancy measures. In Experiment 1, aware high-anxious participants showed similar responding to control participants. However unaware high-anxious participants showed heightened shock expectancy to all stimuli. Experiment 2 replicated this expectancy bias in anxious unaware participants controlling for shock intensity. In both experiments, expectancy bias was associated primarily with anxiety rather than depression. Results support the notion of an interpretive bias in anxious participants under ambiguous threat, consistent with recent findings from information-processing research on linguistic stimuli.
Item memory and source memory were assessed in a task that simulated a social conversation. Participants generated answers to questions or read statements presented by one of three sources (faces on a computer screen). Positive generation effects were observed for item memory. That is, participants remembered topics of conversation better if they were asked questions about the topics than if they simply read statements about topics. However, a negative generation effect occurred for source memory. That is, remembering the source of some information was disrupted if participants were required to answer questions pertaining to that information. These findings support the notion that item and source memory are mediated, as least in part, by different processes during encoding.
Trying to learn sometimes impairs implicit learning of artificial grammars and of control systems. We asked whether such negative effects of trying also occur in implicit learning of subtle sequential regularities and whether such effects vary with adult age. Young (n = 12, age = 20-23) and older (n = 24, age = 60-80) adults completed an alternating serial response time task in which predictable pattern events alternated with random ones in a visual/spatial display. Half of the participants were informed about the pattern and were instructed to try to discover it (intentional instructions), and half were not (incidental instructions). Age-related deficits in implicit learning occurred for both conditions. In addition, for the older group, but not for the younger one, intentional instructions impaired implicit pattern learning. This negative effect of trying to learn demonstrates another similarity among implicit learning tasks, supporting the view that some common processes underlie different forms of implicit learning.
Previous studies of associative learning implicate higher-level cognitive processes in some forms of classical conditioning. An ongoing debate is concerned with the extent to which attention and awareness are necessary for trace but not delay eye-blink conditioning [Clark, R. E. & Squire, L. R. (1998) Science 280, 77-81; Lovibond, P. F. & Shanks, D. (2002) J. Exp. Psychol. Anim. Behav. Processes 28, 38-42]. In trace conditioning, a short interval is interposed between the termination of the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the onset of the unconditioned stimulus (US). In delay conditioning, the CS and US overlap. We here investigate the extent to which human classical fear conditioning depends on working memory. Subjects had to carry out an n-back task, requiring tracking an item 1 or 2 back in a sequentially presented list of numbers, while simultaneously being tested for their ability to associate auditory cues with shocks under a variety of conditions (single-cue versus differential; delay versus trace; no task versus 0-, 1-, and 2-back). Differential delay conditioning proved to be more resilient than differential trace conditioning but does show a reduction due to task interference similar in slope to that found in trace conditioning. Explicit knowledge of the stimulus contingency facilitates but does not guarantee trace conditioning. Only the single-cue delay protocol shows conditioning during the more difficult working memory task. Our findings suggest that the larger the cognitive demands on the system, the less likely conditioning occurs. A postexperimental questionnaire showed a positive correlation between conditioning and awareness for differential trace conditioning extinction.
Emotion reduces utilization of cues. In some tasks this can be an advantage (elimination of irrelevant cues); more often, however, such reduction inhibits performance. Attentive behavior fits into the framework of this theory. It can also be easily translated into terms of information theory allowing a qualitative evaluation of task difficulty.
People sometimes solve problems with a unique process called insight, accompanied by an "Aha!" experience. It has long been unclear whether different cognitive and neural processes lead to insight versus noninsight solutions, or if solutions differ only in subsequent subjective feeling. Recent behavioral studies indicate distinct patterns of performance and suggest differential hemispheric involvement for insight and noninsight solutions. Subjects solved verbal problems, and after each correct solution indicated whether they solved with or without insight. We observed two objective neural correlates of insight. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (Experiment 1) revealed increased activity in the right hemisphere anterior superior temporal gyrus for insight relative to noninsight solutions. The same region was active during initial solving efforts. Scalp electroencephalogram recordings (Experiment 2) revealed a sudden burst of high-frequency (gamma-band) neural activity in the same area beginning 0.3 s prior to insight solutions. This right anterior temporal area is associated with making connections across distantly related information during comprehension. Although all problem solving relies on a largely shared cortical network, the sudden flash of insight occurs when solvers engage distinct neural and cognitive processes that allow them to see connections that previously eluded them.
When individuals are confronted with a complex visual scene that includes some emotional element, memory for the emotional component often is enhanced, whereas memory for peripheral (nonemotional) details is reduced. The present study examined the effects of age and encoding instructions on this effect. With incidental encoding instructions, young and older adults showed this pattern of results, indicating that both groups focused attention on the emotional aspects of the scene. With intentional encoding instructions, young adults no longer showed the effect: They were just as likely to remember peripheral details of negative images as of neutral images. The older adults, in contrast, did not overcome the attentional bias: They continued to show reduced memory for the peripheral elements of the emotional compared with the neutral scenes, even with the intentional encoding instructions.
To investigate whether emotional arousal affects memorial feature binding, we had participants complete a short-term source-monitoring task-remembering the locations of four different pictures over a brief delay. On each trial, the four pictures were all either high arousal, medium arousal, or low arousal. Memory for picture-location conjunctions decreased as arousal increased. In addition, source memory for the location of negative pictures was worse among participants with higher depression scores. Two subsequent functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments showed that relative to low-arousal trials, high- and medium-arousal trials resulted in greater activity in areas associated with visual processing (fusiform gyrus, middle temporal gyrus/middle occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus) and less activity in superior precentral gyrus and the precentral-superior temporal intersect. These findings suggest that arousal (and perhaps negative valence for depressed people) recruits attention to items thereby disrupting working memory processes that help bind features together.
Decision making in an uncertain environment poses a conflict between the opposing demands of gathering and exploiting information. In a classic illustration of this 'exploration-exploitation' dilemma, a gambler choosing between multiple slot machines balances the desire to select what seems, on the basis of accumulated experience, the richest option, against the desire to choose a less familiar option that might turn out more advantageous (and thereby provide information for improving future decisions). Far from representing idle curiosity, such exploration is often critical for organisms to discover how best to harvest resources such as food and water. In appetitive choice, substantial experimental evidence, underpinned by computational reinforcement learning (RL) theory, indicates that a dopaminergic, striatal and medial prefrontal network mediates learning to exploit. In contrast, although exploration has been well studied from both theoretical and ethological perspectives, its neural substrates are much less clear. Here we show, in a gambling task, that human subjects' choices can be characterized by a computationally well-regarded strategy for addressing the explore/exploit dilemma. Furthermore, using this characterization to classify decisions as exploratory or exploitative, we employ functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that the frontopolar cortex and intraparietal sulcus are preferentially active during exploratory decisions. In contrast, regions of striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex exhibit activity characteristic of an involvement in value-based exploitative decision making. The results suggest a model of action selection under uncertainty that involves switching between exploratory and exploitative behavioural modes, and provide a computationally precise characterization of the contribution of key decision-related brain systems to each of these functions.
Fear-potentiated startle is defined as an increase in the magnitude of the startle reflex in the presence of a stimulus that was previously paired with an aversive event. It has been proposed that a subject's awareness of the contingencies in the experiment may affect fear-potentiated startle. The authors adapted a conditional discrimination procedure (AX+/BX-), previously validated in animals, to a human fear-potentiated startle paradigm in 50 healthy volunteers. This paradigm allows for an assessment of fear-potentiated startle during threat conditions as well as inhibition of fear-potentiated startle during safety conditions. A response keypad was used to assess contingency awareness on a trial-by-trial basis. Both aware and unaware subjects showed fear-potentiated startle. However, awareness was related to stimulus discrimination and fear inhibition.
The role of conscious cognitive processes in human affective conditioning remains controversial, with several theories arguing that such conditioning can occur without awareness of the conditioned stimulus (CS)-unconditioned stimulus (UCS) contingency. One specific type of affective conditioning in which unaware conditioning is said to occur is "evaluative conditioning." The present experiment tested the role of contingency awareness by embedding an evaluative conditioning paradigm in a distracting masking task while obtaining, in addition to subjective ratings of affect, both psychophysiological (skin conductance and startle eyeblink) and indirect behavioral (affective priming) measures of conditioning, along with a trial-by-trial measure of awareness from 55 college student participants. Aware participants showed conditioning with all of the measures; unaware participants failed to show conditioning with all measures. The behavioral, neurophysiological, and therapeutic implications of these findings are discussed.
Administered 65 undergraduates a visual continuous performance task (CPT) in which the stimuli were degraded at 2 levels. Results indicate that the CPT significantly increased arousal. A rapid vigilance decrement effect was observed in a subgroup of Ss with a low rate of skin conductance (labile Ss) when stimuli were highly degraded. It is suggested that stimulus degrading causes certain Ss to become less perceptually sensitive to visual targets by taxing limited attentional capacities. Electrodermally labile Ss, compared with stable Ss, are better able to mobilize and sustain their attentional capacity for short periods of time and in high attentional demand situations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The aim of this chapter is to review a sizable literature on electrodermal response (EDR) lability considered as an individual
difference phenomenon. The exposition is divided into three parts. The first deals with questions of definition and measurement
the second presents a first-order and an extended hypothesis regarding likely personality correlates, and the third reviews
evidence for interpreting EDR lability as a concomitant of individual differences in characteristic levels of arousal along
a sleep-wakefulness continuum.
Two different types of trade-offs have been discussed with regard to memory for emotional information: A trade-off in the ability to remember the gist versus the visual detail of emotional information, and a trade-off in the ability to remember the central emotional elements of an event versus the nonemotional (peripheral) elements of that same event. The present study examined whether these two trade-offs interact with one another when participants study scenes that elicit an emotional response due to the inclusion of a negative visually arousing object. Participants studied scenes composed of a negative or a neutral object placed on a background. Their memory was then tested for the “gist” and visual detail of the objects and the backgrounds. The results revealed that there is a pervasive memory trade-off for central emotional versus peripheral nonemotional elements of scenes. With some encoding tasks, a trade-off for gist versus visual detail also resulted, but this trade-off occurred only when memory for the nonemotional background of a scene was assessed. There was no gist/detail trade-off for the emotional objects in a scene.
Classical conditioning of the eye-blink response, perhaps the best studied example of associative learning in vertebrates, is relatively automatic and reflexive, and with the standard procedure (simple delay conditioning), it is intact in animals with hippocampal lesions. In delay conditioning, a tone [the conditioned stimulus (CS)] is presented just before an air puff to the eye [the unconditioned stimulus (US)]. The US is then presented, and the two stimuli coterminate. In trace conditioning, a variant of the standard paradigm, a short interval (500 to 1000 ms) is interposed between the offset of the CS and the onset of the US. Animals with hippocampal lesions fail to acquire trace conditioning. Amnesic patients with damage to the hippocampal formation and normal volunteers were tested on two versions of delay conditioning and two versions of trace conditioning and then assessed for the extent to which they became aware of the temporal relationship between the CS and the US. Amnesic patients acquired delay conditioning at a normal rate but failed to acquire trace conditioning. For normal volunteers, awareness was unrelated to successful delay conditioning but was a prerequisite for successful trace conditioning. Trace conditioning is hippocampus dependent because, as in other tasks of declarative memory, conscious knowledge must be acquired across the training session. Trace conditioning may provide a means for studying awareness in nonhuman animals, in the context of current ideas about multiple memory systems and the function of the hippocampus.
The temporal relationship between the onset of contingency awareness and the onset of discrimination classical conditioning of the skin conductance response was evaluated. Awareness of the CS-UCS contingencies and skin conductance responses were measured trial-by-trial from 60 college student subjects during both acquisition and extinction. In addition, the conditioning paradigm was embedded within a masking task in order to delay the onset of awareness so that preaware and postaware trials could be analyzed. Two skin conductance responses were measured, a short latency first interval response (FIR) and a longer latency second interval response (SIR). Results showed that: 1) the onset of FIR discrimination conditioning began only after subjects indicated awareness of both the positive (CS+) and the negative (CS−) contingencies, 2) concurrent with the onset of this awareness, a) FIR discrimination increased suddenly due to increased responding to CS+ while b) SIR discrimination also increased suddenly for some subjects but gradually developed for others, 3) FIR extinction occurred only among subjects who exhibited expectancy extinction, and was due to decreased responding to CS+. The results are consistent with the interpretation that FIR discrimination is related to the cognitive processing of the CSs’significance, and that SIR discrimination is related to an individual difference variable which was reflected in the rate at which subjects became aware.
Studies on adults have suggested that a deterioration in performance (within session vigilance decrement) on a continuous performance task may be related to individual differences in baseline levels of electrodermal activity (electrodermal lability). This study investigated this relationship in 153 children, aged 9-16 years. A significant vigilance decrement was observed, as indicated by average decreases in perceptual sensitivity (d') over an 11.5-min time period. Although electrodermal labiles were overall more perceptually sensitive than electrodermal stabiles, results did not support the premise that the performance of stabiles decreases over time more than that of labiles. Performance on other cognitive tasks, involving tests of perceptual speed ability, did not appear to be highly related to vigilance performance. However labiles were not only better able to sustain their attention, but also performed better and faster on these cognitive tasks.
Individual differences in electrodermal lability have been related to performance in vigilance and reaction time tasks. The goal of the present study was to employ an "additive factors" approach to identify the stages of information processing that might underlie these effects. Nineteen labile and 17 stabile subjects performed a choice reaction time task in which a visual imperative stimulus was presented under two conditions of intensity (presumed to affect the speed of pre-processing operations) X three conditions of degradation (which influences later encoding processes related to feature extraction). Measures of both reaction time and movement time were obtained. The major findings were: (a) labile subjects had faster reaction times than stabiles, and (b) lability interacted significantly with stimulus degradation. Labiles also tended (p less than .10) to have faster movement times. This pattern indicates that labiles and stabiles differ in the performance of later encoding operations, and possibly in the speed of motor processes as well. However, they do not appear to differ in the early pre-processing of the simple physical attributes of a stimulus.
To determine correlates of the tendency to make errors of commission in a vigilance task, 31 Ss worked at a task of listening to recorded digits for 48 min and reported odd-even-odd digit sequences. Reports of “signals” where signals did not actually occur constituted commission errors. While S was engaged in the vigilance task skin conductance was continuously recorded. A measure of extra-version and neuroticism was available for each S. The tendency to make commission errors was associated with decrement in the detection of real signals over time, low GSR amplitude at detection points, and low initial orienting response. Commission errors were positively related to extraversion and unrelated to neuroticism. It was concluded that commission errors are made by Ss who are low in arousal level, subject to vigilance decrement, and likely to score higher on extra-version.
The study of the mechanism that detects the contingency between events, in both humans and nonhuman animals, is a matter of considerable research activity. Two broad categories of explanations of the acquisition of contingency information have received extensive evaluation: rule-based models and associative models. This article assess the two categories of models for human contingency judgments. The data reveal systematic departures in contingency judgments from the predictions of rule-based models. Recent studies indicate that a contiguity model of Pavlovian conditioning is a useful heuristic for conceptualizing human contingency judgments.
Test-retest stability of electrodermal (EDA) variables indexing both general autonomic arousal (e.g., skin conductance level, number of nonspecific skin conductance responses) and attention to external stimuli (e.g., number of skin conductance orienting responses, electrodermal responder/nonresponder status) was assessed in 71 young, recent-onset schizophrenia patients and 36 demographically matched normal subjects. Significant stability over a 1-year period was found for both patients and normal subjects for most EDA variables and for responder/nonresponder status, with test-retest correlations generally being higher for normal subjects. The lower reliability for patients was not attributable to symptomatic fluctuations during the follow-up period and may reflect poorer arousal regulation among the patients. Among measures of responding to nontask stimuli, a simple count of the number of orienting responses occurring was more stable than was a traditional trials-to-habituation measure.
After a person has become stuck on a problem, they sometimes achieve a clear and sudden solution through insight--the so-called Aha! experience. Because of its distinctive experience, the origins and characteristics of insight have received considerable attention historically in psychological research. However, despite considerable progress in characterizing insight, the underlying mechanisms remain mysterious. We argue that research on insight could be greatly advanced by supplementing traditional insight research, which depends on a few complex problems, with paradigms common in other domains of cognitive science. We describe a large set of mini-insight problems to which multiple methods can be applied, together with subjective reports to identify insight problem-solving. Behavioral priming and neuroimaging methods are providing evidence about what, where, and how neural activity occurs during insight. Such evidence constrains theories of component processes, and will help to demystify insight.
In contrast to the wealth of data describing the neural mechanisms underlying classical conditioning, we know remarkably little about the mechanisms involved in acquisition of explicit contingency awareness. Subjects variably acquire contingency awareness in classical conditioning paradigms, in which they are able to describe the temporal relationship between a conditioned cue and its outcome. Previous studies have implicated the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex in the acquisition of explicit knowledge, although their specific roles remain unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to track the trial-by-trial acquisition of explicit knowledge in a concurrent trace and delay conditioning paradigm. We show that activity in bilateral middle frontal gyrus and parahippocampal gyrus correlates with the accuracy of explicit contingency awareness on each trial. In contrast, amygdala activation correlates with conditioned responses indexed by skin conductance responses (SCRs). These results demonstrate that brain regions known to be involved in other aspects of learning and memory also play a specific role, reflecting on each trial the acquisition and representation of contingency awareness.
Stress-induced activation of the locus ceruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system produces significant cognitive and behavioral effects, including enhanced arousal and attention. Improvements in discrimination task performance and memory have been attributed to this stress response. In contrast, for other cognitive functions that require cognitive flexibility, increased activity of the LC-NE system may produce deleterious effects. The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of pharmacological modulation of the LC-NE system on stress-induced impairments in cognitive flexibility performance in healthy individuals. Cognitive performance, plus psychological and physiological parameters for 16 adults without any history of anxiety disorders, was assessed during four test sessions: stress and no-stress, with each condition tested after administration of propranolol and placebo. The Trier Social Stress Test, a public-speaking and mental arithmetic stressor, was presented to participants for the stress sessions, whereas a similar, but nonstressful, control task (reading, counting) was utilized for the no-stress sessions. Tests of cognitive flexibility included lexical-semantic and associative problem-solving tasks (anagrams, Compound Remote Associates Test). Visuo-spatial memory and motor processing speed tests served as control tasks. Results indicate that (1) stress impaired performance on cognitive flexibility tasks, but not control tasks; (2) compared to placebo, cognitive flexibility improved during stress with propranolol. Therefore, psychological stress, such as public speaking, negatively impacts performance on tasks requiring cognitive flexibility in normal individuals, and this effect is reversed by beta-adrenergic antagonism. This may provide support for the hypothesis that stress-related impairments in cognitive flexibility are related to the noradrenergic system.
Cortical substrates for exploratory decisions in humans Concurrent measurement of awareness and electrodermal classical conditioning
- N D Daw
- J P Doherty
- P Dayan
- B Seymour
- R J L D Dolan
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Information processing and human autonomic classical conditioning
- Dawson
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(Eds.), Advances in psychophysiology (pp. 89-165). Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press.
Temporal stability of electrodermal variables over a one-year period in patients with recent-onset schizophrenia and in normal subjects
- Schell