Uengoer Metin, Lachnit Harald
Faculty of Psychology, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Gutenbergstrasse 18, 35032 Marburg, Germany.
Learn Behav. 2012 Jun;40(2):117-27. doi: 10.3758/s13420-011-0049-z.
The advantage in learning after an intradimensional shift rather than an extradimensional shift has been widely used as a behavioural marker of attentional changes during discrimination learning in different fields of neuroscientific study. However, some of the factors assumed to guide these attentional changes have not been completely disentangled by previous research. In two predictive-learning experiments, we investigated the importance of stimulus relevance and of stimulus-outcome correlation for the modulation of attention. In each experiment, participants were trained on two discrimination problems given in successive order. Each problem required participants to differentiate stimuli varying on two dimensions. We found that acquisition of the second discrimination was influenced by whether its relevant dimension (Exp. 1) or its irrelevant dimension (Exp. 2) had previously been trained as relevant and uncorrelated or as irrelevant and uncorrelated. We also observed that acquisition of the second discrimination was independent of whether its relevant dimension (Exp. 1) or its irrelevant dimension (Exp. 2) had previously been trained as relevant and uncorrelated or as relevant and correlated. Our results indicated that the modulation of attention is guided by stimulus relevance and not by stimulus-outcome correlation.
在维度内转换而非维度间转换后进行学习的优势，已被广泛用作神经科学不同研究领域中辨别学习期间注意力变化的行为标志。然而，一些被认为指导这些注意力变化的因素尚未被先前的研究所完全厘清。在两项预测学习实验中，我们研究了刺激相关性和刺激-结果相关性对注意力调节的重要性。在每个实验中，参与者依次接受两个辨别问题的训练。每个问题要求参与者区分在两个维度上变化的刺激。我们发现，第二个辨别的习得受到其相关维度（实验1）或不相关维度（实验2）先前是否被训练为相关且不相关或不相关且不相关的影响。我们还观察到，第二个辨别的习得与它的相关维度（实验1）或不相关维度（实验2）先前是否被训练为相关且不相关或相关且相关无关。我们的结果表明，注意力的调节是由刺激相关性而非刺激-结果相关性引导的。
