Contextual control in discrimination reversal learning.

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 Context 2 (Experiments 1A and 1B) or in Context 1 and Context 3 (Experiment 2). During the test phase, performance in Context 1 and Context 2 reflected the contingencies trained during Phase 1 and Phase 2, respectively. When testing occurred in Context 3, there was no discriminative responding between A and B. In addition, the experiments demonstrated that discriminating stimuli with a consistent reinforcement history were also affected by contextual manipulations. Results indicate that each training context acquires the ability to control performance. Unique-cue and configural approaches account for a major part of the results.