Bustamante Javier, Uengoer Metin, Lachnit Harald
Department of Psychology, University of Chile Santiago, Chile.
Faculty of Psychology, Philipps-Universität Marburg Marburg, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2016 Dec 20;7:1968. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01968. eCollection 2016.
Associative learning refers to our ability to learn about regularities in our environment. When a stimulus is repeatedly followed by a specific outcome, we learn to expect the outcome in the presence of the stimulus. We are also able to modify established expectations in the face of disconfirming information (the stimulus is no longer followed by the outcome). Both the change of environmental regularities and the related processes of adaptation are referred to as extinction. However, extinction does not erase the initially acquired expectations. For instance, following successful extinction, the initially learned expectations can recover when there is a context change - a phenomenon called the renewal effect, which is considered as a model for relapse after exposure therapy. Renewal was found to be modulated by reminder cues of acquisition and extinction. However, the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of reminder cues are not well understood. The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of reminder cues on renewal in the field of human predictive learning. Experiment I demonstrated that renewal in human predictive learning is modulated by cues related to acquisition or extinction. Initially, participants received pairings of a stimulus and an outcome in one context. These stimulus-outcome pairings were preceded by presentations of a reminder cue (acquisition cue). Then, participants received extinction in a different context in which presentations of the stimulus were no longer followed by the outcome. These extinction trials were preceded by a second reminder cue (extinction cue). During a final phase conducted in a third context, participants showed stronger expectations of the outcome in the presence of the stimulus when testing was accompanied by the acquisition cue compared to the extinction cue. Experiment II tested an explanation of the reminder cue effect in terms of simple cue-outcome associations. Therefore, acquisition and extinction cues were equated for their associative histories in Experiment II, which should abolish their impact on renewal if based on simple cue-outcome associations. In contrast to this prediction, Experiment II replicated the findings from Experiment I indicating that the effectiveness of reminder cues did not require direct reminder cue-outcome associations.
联想学习指的是我们了解环境规律的能力。当一个刺激反复伴随着一个特定结果时，我们学会在该刺激出现时预期这个结果。面对与预期不符的信息（刺激不再伴随着该结果）时，我们也能够修改已有的预期。环境规律的改变以及相关的适应过程都被称为消退。然而，消退并不会消除最初习得的预期。例如，在成功消退之后，当环境发生变化时，最初习得的预期可能会恢复——这种现象被称为恢复效应，它被视为暴露疗法后复发的一种模型。研究发现，恢复效应受到习得和消退提示线索的调节。然而，提示线索有效性背后的机制尚未得到很好的理解。本研究的目的是调查提示线索对人类预测学习领域中恢复效应的影响。实验一表明，人类预测学习中的恢复效应受到与习得或消退相关线索的调节。最初，参与者在一种情境中接受刺激与结果的配对。这些刺激 - 结果配对之前会呈现一个提示线索（习得线索）。然后，参与者在另一种不同的情境中接受消退，在这种情境下，刺激的呈现不再伴随着结果。这些消退试验之前会呈现第二个提示线索（消退线索）。在第三个情境中进行的最后阶段测试中，与消退线索相比，当测试伴随着习得线索时，参与者在刺激出现时对结果表现出更强烈的预期。实验二根据简单的线索 - 结果关联对提示线索效应进行了测试。因此，在实验二中，习得线索和消退线索在其关联历史方面是等同的，如果基于简单的线索 - 结果关联，这应该会消除它们对恢复效应的影响。与这一预测相反，实验二重复了实验一的结果，表明提示线索的有效性并不需要直接的线索 - 结果关联。
