Noncontingent stimulation, stimulus familiarization, and subsequent learning in young infants

2 experiments assessed the effects of prior noncontingent or familiarization experience on subsequent operant conditioning (kick-produced mobile movement) in young infants. In Experiment 1, infants received either long- or short-term noncontingent exposure to their own rotating mobile or simply viewed this mobile for several days while it remained motionless. In Experiment 2, long-term exposure was provided by the same novel mobile used for subsequent training. In both experiments, prior noncontingent experience did not interfere with subsequent conditioning. In Experiment 2, however, simple long-term familiarization with the training mobile precluded "evidence" of learning. The results indicated that infants develop expectancies regarding how stimuli occurring in particular contexts should behave based on their prior experiences with these stimuli.     

The effect of noncontingent outcomes on extinction of the response-outcome association

The effect of noncontingent outcomes on an instrumental response-outcome (R-O) association was examined in four experiments using transfer tests. In each experiment, rats were first given instrumental discrimination training designed to establish different stimuli as signals (S+s) for different outcomes. Transfer responses were subjected to different treatments across the experiments and then tested with the S+s. In Experiments 1 and 2, two transfer responses were both initially trained with two contingent outcomes. Then, each transfer response was subjected either to the addition of noncontingent presentations of one of those outcomes (Experiment 1) or to the replacement of one of the contingent outcomes with noncontingent presentations of that outcome (Experiment 2). Transfer tests revealed no significant difference in the ability of an S+ to promote performance of a transfer response based on their shared association with either the contingent or the noncontingent outcome. These results suggest that a response reinforced with two outcomes remains equally well associated with both of those outcomes despite prolonged exposure to noncontingent presentations of one of those outcomes. In Experiments 3 and 4, the possibility that the noncontingent schedules of reinforcement used in Experiments 1 and 2 might be capable of establishing an association between a response and its noncontingent outcome was examined. Transfer responses were trained with one contingent outcome and a different noncontingent outcome. Performance of these transfer responses was augmented more by presentations of an S+ trained with the contingent outcome than with the noncontingent outcome. These results confirm previous reports that instrumental responses are sensitive to outcome contingencies in acquisition and that noncontingent outcome presentations do not weaken previously established R-O associations. Several explanations are considered for the failure of subsequent noncontingent presentations of an outcome to reduce the strength of its association with the instrumental response.     

The belief revision model: asymmetrical effects of noncontingency on human covariation learning

A noncontingent experience affects the subsequent detection of positive and negative contingencies between the same events. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that such preexposure can produce both an impairment in the detection of subsequent positive contingency and a facilitation of a negative one, independent of the level of contingency during the contingent phase. Experiment 3 raised difficulties for a model that assumes that associations to the context can explain this asymmetrical effect. Experiment 4 suggested that the different weights usually assigned to the different types of trials when computing the contingency between events can change as a result of a noncontingent experience with the same events. This change supports an account of the asymmetrical effect by a belief revision model based on a mechanism that updates the weights of the different trial types as a function of previous experience. More generally, the belief revision model is a statistical (i.e., nonassociative) model of learning that is capable of accounting for trial-order effects, which have long posed problems for statistical models.     

Diagnosing the Poor Performance of Self‐worth Protective Students: A product of future outcome uncertainty,evaluative threat,or both?

Self‐worth protective students characteristically perform well on some occasions yet on other occasions they perform poorly. In this study, two accounts of the poor performance of self‐worth protective students are assessed. The first is that their poor performance is an outcome of evaluative threat. The second is that their poor performance is an outcome of future outcome uncertainty: a product of their uncertain global self‐esteem and uncertainty about the causes of achievement outcomes. Students high or low in self‐worth protection were exposed to either noncontingent success (creating future outcome uncertainty), noncontingent failure (evoking evaluative threat), or contingent success. Their ability to solve two tasks that involved a high degree of uncertainty was then assessed. Students high in self‐worth protection performed poorly following both noncontingent failure and noncontingent success, supporting the roles of both evaluative threat and future outcome uncertainty. The implications in terms of enhancing the achievement of students high in self‐worth protection are discussed.     

Stereotypy of spatial movements during noncontingent and contingent reinforcement

The degree of stereotypy in the movement patterns of 3 pigeons during noncontingent and contingent periodic food reinforcement was quantified by analyzing the distribution of turning angles, and by using information and Fourier analyses. The results indicated that (1) movement patterns were less stereotyped during noncontingent than during contingent reinforcement, (2) a reversal to noncontingent reinforcement resulted in a degree of stereotypy comparable to that during the first phase of noncontingent reinforcement, (3) movement patterns were maximally stereotyped immediately after food withdrawal and generally became less stereotyped as reinforcement approached, regardless of whether reinforcement was noncontingent or contingent, and (4) higher frequency movements generally accounted for more variance in the movements during contingent than during noncontingent reinforcement. Greater stereotypy in the movements during contingent reinforcement was likely due to a greater probability that similar movements were reinforced during contingent reinforcement. Momentary changes in the stereotypy of the movements within the interfood interval might reflect changes in the level of arousal.     

Specificity of cue to consequence in aversion learning in the rat: Control for US-induced differential orientations

In four experiments, each using a single conditioning trial, rats avoided a light more than a saccharin solution after these stimuli had been paired with footshock, whereas saccharin was avoided more than the light after these stimuli had been paired with lithium injection. The use of a single conditioning trial precludes possible US-induced differential orientations from influencing which stimuli will be associated on the conditioning trial. This cue-consequence specificity effect was obtained even when subjects conditioned with lithium received a non-contingent footshock prior to the test session, and when subjects conditioned with footshock received a noncontingent lithium injection before testing (Experiments 2–4). Weak aversions to the light in rats given a light-lithium pairing and noncontingent footshock and to the saccharin in subjects that received a saccharin-footshock pairing and noncontingent lithium administration were obtained in Experiment 2. However, these weak aversions were not obtained when subjects were given three nonreinforced exposures to the test chamber before the test session (Experiments 3 and 4). These results indicate that US-induced differential orientations do not mediate the cue-consequence effect in aversion learning.     

Signal-food contingency and signal frequency in a continuous trials auto-shaping paradigm

Five groups of pigeons were studied in an auto-shaping procedure which programmed two types of trials represented by hues on the response key. Each signal was separated by a brief intertriai interval. Three groups were studied with a positive correlation between one of the signals and food (contingent groups). They differed with respect to the frequency with which the positive signal appeared. Two noncontingent groups were studied in which the correlation between the signals and food was eliminated by programming food with the same probability following either signal. One noncontingent group had a high density of reinforcement produced by adding reinforcement in the other signal, at the same rate as programmed in the positive signal for the contingent groups. The other noncontingent group experienced the same number of reinforcements in the session as the contingent group with the least frequent positive trial, but these reinforcements were distributed with equal probability across the signals. Birds in the contingent groups with intermediate or infrequent positive signals all acquired reliable pecking, with acquisition most rapid for the infrequent signal. Maintained responding covaried with the speed of acquisition. No birds in the noncontingent groups showed reliable responding. Birds in the contingent group with a frequent positive signal (approximately 3/4 of the session), also showed no reliable pecking. This result suggests that more than one noncontingent group is informative for assessing the role of differential reinforcement probability in the acquisition of auto-shaped keypecking. In particular, a noncontingent group which controls for the frequency of reinforced trials is an appropriate reference group.

     

Generality of US preexposure effects: Transfer from food to shock or shock to food with and without the same response requirements

A series of four experiments, employing mice, investigated the generality of the learned helplessness phenomenon. The first two experiments used preexposure to aversive stimuli (shock), while the other two used preexposure to appetitive stimuli (food). In all of the studies, subjects were preexposed to contingent, noncontingent, or no stimuli (except for Experiment 2) in a Skinner box. During the test, animals preexposed to shock were tested with food, and those preexposed to food were tested with shock. The test was conducted in a similar situation, a Skinner box (Experiments 1, 3), or a different situation—a runway (Experiments 2, 4). Performance decrements were evident when subjects that were preexposed to a noncontingent stimulus were compared with subjects preexposed to contingent stimuli. The differences between the contingent and the noncontingent groups were significant, as were the differences between the contingent and the nonpreexposed groups (except for Experiment 1). The effects cut across the different types of stimuli, situations, and response requirements of the preexposure and test phases.     

Licking one saccharin solution for access to another in rats: Contingent and noncontingent effects in instrumental performance

Separation of the contingent and noncontingent effects of a schedule on amount of instrumental responding is desirable but difficult in schedules that involve instrumental and contingent responses that are either highly probable or very similar. Three studies in which rats were required to lick a solution of .1% saccharin for access to a preferred solution of .4% saccharin showed that neither single nor paired operant baselines of the instrumental response allowed accurate separation of the contingent and noncontingent effects of a fixed-ratio schedule. Two within-subject yoking procedures provided the best baselines of noncontingent effects: the massed baseline measured amount of .1% licking when each subject received free access to the total amount of .4% licking it obtained at asymptote under the schedule; the matched baseline measured .1% licking when each subject received the same access to the .4% solution, but presented in the intermittent pattern obtained during the schedule. Of the three algebraic models used to predict noncontingent effects, the substitution model was most promising, but still not adequate. The procedure of a between-subjects yoked control was also not effective.     

The effects of Pavlovian CSs on two food-reinforced baselines— with and without noncontingent shock

Two experiments explored the effects of Pavlovian (tone-shock) CS+, CS?, and truly random control (TRC) contingencies on two different food-reinforced instrumental baselines. One food-reinforced baseline contained noncontingent shock, while the other did not. In the first experiment, a TRC contingency was shown to produce suppression of food-reinforced responding, while a CS? contingency did not. When noncontingent shock was added to the baseline, however, the TRC stimuli failed to produce suppression, and the CS? contingency increased response rates over baseline level. In a second experiment, the effects of TRC and CS+ contingencies were compared on these same two baselines. While the CS+ produced suppression on both shock and no-shock baselines, the TRC contingency again produced suppression on only the no-shock baseline.     

Differential punishment of other behavior: Effects of pause-dependent shock on variable-interval performance

Three albino rats were exposed to a differential-punishment-of-other-behavior shock schedule superimposed on a variable-interval schedule of food presentation. With this arrangement, failure to barpress for a specified interval since the previous response resulted in delivery of shock. This procedure reliably decreased the number of specified pauses and was accompanied by increases in barpress rates and shifts in the distribution of responses. Subsequent exposure to noncontingent shock produced similar, but quantitatively smaller, changes for two of the three subjects. Training with barpress-dependent shock and reexposure to noncontingent shock further diminished these effects. This study demonstrates that pauses are conditionable units of behavior insofar as they are sensitive to a punishment contingency. In terms of the targeted unit of behavior, the current findings are similar to those obtained with barpress-dependent or interresponse-time-dependent shock schedules and suggest a continuum of response specification.     

Habituation to illness: Effects of prior experience with the US on the formation of learned taste aversions in rats

Experiment 1 investigated the effects of US habituation on the acquisition and extinction of learned taste aversions in rats. Subjects receiving five noncontingent LiCl intubations prior to conditioning failed to develop a conditioned taste aversion, while control subjects experiencing a single saccharin/LiCl pairing displayed a pronounced taste aversion which weakened during subsequent poisonings. Experiment 2 examined whether habituation, defined as a waning of responses to repeated presentation of an illness stimulus, was a possible mechanism for explaining the results of Experiment 1. Subjects showed a decrease in motor activity following an initial LiCl intubation, but less attenuation of activity with successive intubations.     

Contextual conditioning during free-operant extinction: Unsignaled,signaled, and backward-signaled noncontingent food

Three experiments were designed to study the effects of contextual conditioning on the extinction of instrumental leverpressing that had been reinforced on a random-interval schedule. In Experiment 1, noncontingent food retarded extinction, but signaling food delivery, a treatment that should reduce contextual conditioning, reduced the interference. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 and demonstrated that if the food preceded rather than followed the signal, the retardation of extinction was not reduced but was enhanced. In Experiment 3, non-contingent leverpressing was used to directly verify that the three treatments—forward signaling, noncontingent food, and backward signaling—differentially influenced contextual conditioning. Forward signaling produced the least, and backward signaling produced the most, contextual conditioning. This monotonic relationship between contextual conditioning and interference with extinction was used as evidence to support the argument that context-food associations are important in controlling instrumental responding.     

Social and nonsocial category discriminations in a chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and American black bears (Ursus americanus)

One captive adult chimpanzee and 3 adult American black bears were presented with a series of natural category discrimination tasks on a touch-screen computer. This is the first explicit comparison of bear and primate abilities using identical tasks, and the first test of a social concept in a carnivore. The discriminations involved a social relationship category (mother/offspring) and a nonsocial category involving food items. The social category discrimination could be made using knowledge of the overarching mother/offspring concept, whereas the nonsocial category discriminations could be made only by using perceptual rules, such as “choose images that show larger and smaller items of the same type.” The bears failed to show above-chance transfer on either the social or nonsocial discriminations, indicating that they did not use either the perceptual rule or knowledge of the overarching concept of mother/offspring to guide their choices in these tasks. However, at least 1 bear remembered previously reinforced stimuli when these stimuli were recombined, later. The chimpanzee showed transfer on a control task and did not consistently apply a perceptual rule to solve the nonsocial task, so it is possible that he eventually acquired the social concept. Further comparisons between species on identical tasks assessing social knowledge will help illuminate the selective pressures responsible for a range of social cognitive skills.     

Immunization to learned helplessness in appetitive noncontingent contexts

We examined immunization against learned helplessness in 36 dogs. The experiment consisted of five phases: (1) appetitive contingent training, (2) immunization training, (3) inescapable noise training, (4) recovery, and (5) an appetitive noncontingent test. There were six groups: (1) a group immunized by controllable and predictable noise, (2) a group immunized by controllable but unpredictable noise, (3) a group immunized by uncontrollable but predictable noise, (4) a group given uncontrollable and unpredictable noise during immunization training, (5) a group not submitted to any treatment during the immunization phase, followed by uncontrollable noise, and (6) a group not submitted to any treatment. The immunization effect was assessed by measuring the acquisition of an appetitive response when food was not contingent upon responding. Our results demonstrate that the immunization effect can be observed in a noncontingent appetitive context. The effects of escapable noises that ensure immunization against the motivational deficit and predictable noises that immunize against the associative deficit seem to be additive.     

Mother-child conflict in the toddler years: lessons in emotion,morality, and relationships

Sixty-three mother-toddler dyads took part in a 6-month prospective study that examined how differences in the frequency and nature of early mother-toddler conflict related to individual differences in children's subsequent socioemotional development. When the children were 30 months, mothers and children participated in a series of laboratory tasks and in a 1.5-hr unstructured home observation. All episodes of verbal conflict between mothers and their children were identified from these sessions, transcribed, and coded for certain elements (e.g., strategy, discussion of emotion, and resolution). At 36 months, children participated in measures of emotional understanding, social competence, and early conscience development. Mothers' use of justification, resolution, and mitigation in conflict at 30 months predicted high levels of socioemotional development at age 3. These findings suggest that conflict may be an important context for children's socioemotional development.     

Individual Differences in Theory of Mind,Aggressive Behavior,and Social Skills In Young Children

Research Findings. The present study examined relations between social-cognitive skills, aggression, and social competence using teacher questionnaires and tabletop tasks with preschool and kindergarten children. It was hypothesized that the acquisition of a theory of "mind," as indexed by an understanding of false beliefs, might be related to social behavior for this age group. Overall, results indicated that both generation of forceful solutions in a traditional social-problem solving task and performance on the false belief tasks were significantly related to social competence, after controlling for the effects of age, language comprehension, and teacher ratings of aggression. In addition, theory of mind understanding was a better predictor of social competence than performance on a more traditional social information-processing task that involved the generation of alternative solutions to interpersonal problems. Practice. The implications of these findings for preschool and kindergarten peer relations and their potential relevance to treatment of deficits in social skills are discussed. Specifically, training in an understanding of counterfactual thinking (e.g., through increased and structured opportunities to engage in pretend play and storytelling) may enhance preschooler social skills.     

Individual Differences in Theory of Mind, Aggressive Behavior, and Social Skills In Young Children

Research Findings. The present study examined relations between social-cognitive skills, aggression, and social competence using teacher questionnaires and tabletop tasks with preschool and kindergarten children. It was hypothesized that the acquisition of a theory of “mind”, as indexed by an understanding of false beliefs, might be related to social behavior for this age group. Overall, results indicated that both generation of forceful solutions in a traditional social-problem solving task and performance on the false belief tasks were significantly related to social competence, after controlling for the effects of age, language comprehension, and teacher ratings of aggression. In addition, theory of mind understanding was a better predictor of social competence than performance on a more traditional social information-processing task that involved the generation of alternative solutions to interpersonal problems. Practice. The implications of these findings for preschool and kindergarten peer relations and their potential relevance to treatment of deficits in social skills are discussed. Specifically, training in an understanding of counterfactual thinking (e.g., through increased and structured opportunities to engage in pretend play and storytelling) may enhance preschooler social skills.     

Getting Ready to Learn—And Learning

Research Findings: The study examined children's recognition of emotion from faces and body poses, as well as gender differences in these recognition abilities. Preschool-aged children (N = 55) and their parents and teachers participated in the study. Preschool-aged children completed a web-based measure of emotion recognition skills that included 5 tasks (3 with faces and 2 with bodies). Parents and teachers reported on children's aggressive behaviors and social skills. Children's emotion accuracy on 2 of the 3 facial tasks and 1 of the body tasks was related to teacher reports of social skills. Some of these relations were moderated by child gender. In particular, the relationships between emotion recognition accuracy and reports of children's behavior were stronger for boys than girls. Practice or Policy: Identifying preschool-aged children's strengths and weaknesses in terms of the identification of emotion from faces and body poses may be helpful in guiding interventions with children who have problems with social and behavioral functioning that may be due in part to emotion knowledge deficits. Further developmental implications of these findings are discussed.     

Skype Me! Socially Contingent Interactions Help Toddlers Learn Language

Language learning takes place in the context of social interactions, yet the mechanisms that render social interactions useful for learning language remain unclear. This study focuses on whether social contingency might support word learning. Toddlers aged 24–30 months (N = 36) were exposed to novel verbs in one of three conditions: live interaction training, socially contingent video training over video chat, and noncontingent video training (yoked video). Results suggest that children only learned novel verbs in socially contingent interactions (live interactions and video chat). This study highlights the importance of social contingency in interactions for language learning and informs the literature on learning through screen media as the first study to examine word learning through video chat technology.