Department of Psychology, Neuroimaging Center and Institute of General Psychology, Biopsychology, and Methods of Psychology, Technische Universitaet Dresden Dresden, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2012 Nov 27;3:522. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00522. eCollection 2012.
Acquiring knowledge about the relationship between stimulus conditions, one's own actions, and the resulting consequences or effects, is one prerequisite for intentional action. Previous studies have shown that such contextualized associations between actions and their effects (S-R-E associations) can be picked up very quickly. The present study examined how such weakly practiced associations might affect overt behavior during the process of initial learning and during subsequent retrieval, and how these two measures are inter-related. We examined incidental (S-)R-E learning in the context of trial-and-error S-R learning and in the context of instruction-based S-R learning. Furthermore, as a control condition, common outcome (CO) learning blocks were included in which all responses produced one common sound effect, hence precluding differential (S-)R-E learning. Post-learning retrieval of R-E associations was tested by re-using previously produced sound effects as novel imperative stimuli combined with actions that were either compatible or incompatible with the previously encountered R-E mapping. The central result was that the size of the compatibility effect could be predicted by the size of relative response slowing during ongoing learning in the preceding acquisition phase, both in trial-and-error learning and in instruction-based learning. Importantly, this correlation was absent for the CO control condition, precluding accounts based on unspecific factors. Instead, the results suggest that differential outcomes are "actively" integrated into action planning and that this takes additional planning time. We speculate that this might be especially true for weakly practiced (S-)R-E associations before an initial goal-directed action mode transitions into a more stimulus-based action mode.
获得关于刺激条件、自身动作和产生的结果或效应之间关系的知识是意向性行动的一个前提。先前的研究表明，动作与其效应之间的这种上下文关联（S-R-E 关联）可以非常快地被捕捉到。本研究考察了这种弱练习的关联如何在初始学习过程中和随后的检索过程中影响明显的行为，以及这两个测量如何相互关联。我们在试误 S-R 学习和基于指令的 S-R 学习的背景下检查了偶然的（S-）R-E 学习。此外，作为对照条件，还包括了共同结果（CO）学习块，其中所有反应都产生一种共同的声音效果，从而排除了不同的（S-）R-E 学习。通过重新使用先前产生的声音效果作为新的命令刺激，并结合与先前遇到的 R-E 映射兼容或不兼容的动作，测试了 R-E 关联的学习后检索。主要结果是，在先前的获取阶段中进行的持续学习过程中，相对反应速度的变化大小可以预测兼容性效应的大小，无论是在试误学习还是基于指令的学习中都是如此。重要的是，对于 CO 对照条件，这种相关性并不存在，排除了基于非特定因素的解释。相反，结果表明，不同的结果被“主动”纳入到动作规划中，这需要额外的规划时间。我们推测，对于最初的目标导向动作模式过渡到更基于刺激的动作模式之前，弱练习的（S-）R-E 关联尤其如此。
