H J Grabitz’s research while affiliated with Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and other places

The status of evaluative conditioning (EC) as a distinct form of associative learning was called in question by Field and Davey (1997, 1998, 1999), who argued that in the typical visual EC paradigm, nonassociative visual concept learning is responsible for the evaluative changes observed. Especially, the use of only within-subject control conditions instead of independent control groups was criticized. The present three experiments show (a) that EC effects can be demonstrated within another sensory modality than visual perception and (b) that EC effects are demonstrable in a between-subject design (including a successful replication attempt). A further result was that these EC effects do not require participants' conscious awareness. The data provide no support for an artifactual account of EC but suggest an interpretation of EC as a form of associative learning.

Several findings and research procedures spread over different disciplines of psychology and known under varying names (evaluative conditioning, unconscious affective priming, mere exposure, automatic evaluation) are described with respect to the aspect of unconscious evaluation processes. The influence of unconscious evaluation processes is not limited to elementary responses but also demonstrable in complex social interactions. A question of theoretical interest is whether the phenomena observed are based on automatic processes or are mediated by cognitive processes. Another point of discussion is the function of unconscious evaluation processes.

Two experiments were conducted to examine whether sensory preconditioning is demonstrable in the evaluative conditioning paradigm. Both experiments included between- and within-subjects control conditions. In Experiment 1, forward pairings of the preexposed stimuli were used, whereas in Experiment 2, forward and backward pairings were employed. The results show that affective–evaluative learning is sensitive to a sensory preconditioning procedure, thus demonstrating that evaluative conditioning does not require the direct experience of a valued event. The subjects did not show any signs of verbal knowledge of the stimulus arrangements. The results are discussed in the context of recent models of classical and evaluative conditioning.

Schwartz (1982, 1988) found that a pretraining of contingent reinforcement interferes with subsequent rule discovery. The present study investigated the effects of schedule imposed sequential and quantitative constraints (Timberlake & Allison, 1974) on task performance in a subsequent test phase. Sixty-four Ss, students of the University of Duesseldorf, were assigned at random to one of four experimental conditions, differing according to the presence vs. absence of sequential and quantitative constraints, respectively. Discrimination-learning performance and variability during test phase were significantly better for Ss experiencing sequential constraint during treatment. In contrast, the introduction of a quantitative restriction during treatment had no statistically significant effects on test phase performance.

In an experiment designed to demonstrate evaluative conditioning, subjects were shown 48 pictures of sculptures that they rated on a scale with 21 categories (-10 to +10). Then, the two most liked pictures (L) were paired with pictures from the categories -1, 0, or +1 (N). In contrast to prior experiments, subjects were given either forward conditioning (N-L) or backward conditioning (L-N) trials but not both. Four other neutral stimuli were paired with each other (N-N) and acted as control stimulus pairs. After conditioning, the stimuli were rated a second time. There was a statistically significant difference in evaluative ratings showing a change of the evaluative tone of the previously neutral stimuli in a positive direction only after forward conditioning. This finding is inconsistent with results of prior experiments and challenges the assumption of Martin and Levey (1987) that evaluative conditioning is different from human classical conditioning.