Maes Elisa, Boddez Yannick, Alfei Joaquín Matías, Krypotos Angelos-Miltiadis, D'Hooge Rudi, De Houwer Jan, Beckers Tom
Department of Psychology, KU Leuven.
Department of Clinical Psychology, Utrecht University.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2016 Sep;145(9):e49-71. doi: 10.1037/xge0000200. Epub 2016 Jul 18.
With the discovery of the blocking effect, learning theory took a huge leap forward, because blocking provided a crucial clue that surprise is what drives learning. This in turn stimulated the development of novel association-formation theories of learning. Eventually, the ability to explain blocking became nothing short of a touchstone for the validity of any theory of learning, including propositional and other nonassociative theories. The abundance of publications reporting a blocking effect and the importance attributed to it suggest that it is a robust phenomenon. Yet, in the current article we report 15 failures to observe a blocking effect despite the use of procedures that are highly similar or identical to those used in published studies. Those failures raise doubts regarding the canonical nature of the blocking effect and call for a reevaluation of the central status of blocking in theories of learning. They may also illustrate how publication bias influences our perspective toward the robustness and reliability of seemingly established effects in the psychological literature. (PsycINFO Database Record
随着阻断效应的发现，学习理论向前迈出了巨大的一步，因为阻断提供了一个关键线索，即意外是驱动学习的因素。这反过来又刺激了新的学习联想形成理论的发展。最终，解释阻断效应的能力成为任何学习理论（包括命题理论和其他非联想理论）有效性的试金石。大量报道阻断效应的出版物以及赋予它的重要性表明这是一个稳健的现象。然而，在本文中，我们报告了15次未能观察到阻断效应的情况，尽管使用的程序与已发表研究中使用的程序高度相似或相同。这些失败引发了对阻断效应规范性本质的质疑，并呼吁重新评估阻断在学习理论中的核心地位。它们还可能说明出版偏差如何影响我们对心理学文献中看似既定效应的稳健性和可靠性的看法。（PsycINFO数据库记录）
