Byrom Nicola C, Murphy Robin A
1 Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
2 Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2019 Feb;72(2):182-192. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2017.1363256. Epub 2018 Jan 1.
When multiple cues are presented in compound and trained to predict an outcome, the cues may compete for association with an outcome. However, if both cues are necessary for solution of the discrimination, then competition might be expected to interfere with the solution of the discrimination. We consider how unequal stimulus salience influences learning in configural discriminations, where no individual stimulus predicts the outcome. We compared two hypotheses: (1) salience modulation minimises the initial imbalance in salience and (2) unequal stimulus salience will impair acquisition of configural discriminations. We assessed the effect of varying stimulus salience in a biconditional discrimination (AX+, AY-, BX-, BY+). Across two experiments, we found stronger discrimination when stimuli had matched, rather than mismatched, salience, supporting our second hypothesis. We discuss the implications of this finding for Mackintosh's model of selective attention, modified elemental models and configural models of learning.
当多个线索以复合形式呈现并被训练用于预测一个结果时，这些线索可能会竞争与该结果的关联。然而，如果两个线索对于辨别任务的解决都是必要的，那么可以预期竞争会干扰辨别任务的解决。我们考虑了不等的刺激显著性如何影响构型辨别中的学习，在构型辨别中没有单个刺激能预测结果。我们比较了两个假设：（1）显著性调制使显著性的初始不平衡最小化；（2）不等的刺激显著性会损害构型辨别的习得。我们在一个双条件辨别任务（AX+，AY-，BX-，BY+）中评估了改变刺激显著性的影响。在两个实验中，我们发现当刺激具有匹配而非不匹配的显著性时，辨别力更强，这支持了我们的第二个假设。我们讨论了这一发现对麦金托什的选择性注意模型、修正的元素模型和学习的构型模型的意义。
