Abstract
Can conditioning occur without conscious awareness of the contingency between the stimuli? We trained participants on two separate reaction time tasks that ensured attention to the experimental stimuli. The tasks were then interleaved to create a differential Pavlovian contingency between visual stimuli from one task and an airpuff stimulus from the other. Many participants were unaware of the contingency and failed to show differential eyeblink conditioning, despite attending to a salient stimulus that was contingently and contiguously related to the airpuff stimulus over many trials. Manipulation of awareness by verbal instruction dramatically increased awareness and differential eyeblink responding. These findings cast doubt on dual-system theories, which propose an automatic associative system independent of cognition, and provide strong evidence that cognitive processes associated with awareness play a causal role in learning.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 467-475 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Psychological Science |
Volume | 27 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2016 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
© The Author(s) 2016. Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navKeywords
- attention
- awareness
- eyeblink conditioning
- learning
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'I think, therefore eyeblink : the importance of contingency awareness in conditioning'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Datasets
-
Task-switching data
Weidemann, G., Western Sydney University, 15 Dec 2015
DOI: 10.4225/35/59d310e5703cd, https://research-data.westernsydney.edu.au/published/e7ba4770519311ecb15399911543e199
Dataset