Patterson Rachel R, Lipp Ottmar V, Luck Camilla C
School of Population Health, Curtin University, Perth, Australia.
School of Psychology and Counselling, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Cogn Emot. 2025 Mar;39(2):297-319. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2408367. Epub 2024 Oct 6.
In evaluative conditioning, a neutral conditional stimulus (CS) acquires the valence of a pleasant or unpleasant unconditional stimulus (US) after the CS and US are paired (acquisition). Valence acquired by the CS can generalise to other stimuli from the same category. Presenting the CS alone can reduce evaluative conditioning (extinction), but evaluations can return after the US is presented alone (reinstatement). The current research investigated whether extinction and reinstatement generalise to other category members (generalisation stimuli, GS). In Experiment 1, evaluations generalised in acquisition after conditioning with one category exemplar, but GS evaluations were unaffected by extinction and reinstatement. In Experiment 2, we aimed to enhance generalisation by presenting multiple category exemplars during conditioning. This strengthened the generalisation of evaluations in extinction but not reinstatement. In Experiment 3, conditioning with multiple exemplars caused explicit and implicit evaluations (measured using an affective priming task) to generalise in acquisition but not in extinction or reinstatement. The acquisition and extinction of US expectancy generalised in all experiments, but the reinstatement generalised in Experiment 3 only. Overall, we found partial evidence of evaluative generalisation during extinction (but not reinstatement) and demonstrated that the extinction and reinstatement of US expectancy generalises in evaluative conditioning.
在评价性条件作用中，一个中性条件刺激（CS）在与愉快或不愉快的无条件刺激（US）配对（习得）后，会获得该无条件刺激的效价。CS获得的效价可以泛化到同一类别的其他刺激上。单独呈现CS可以减少评价性条件作用（消退），但在单独呈现US后，评价可能会恢复（恢复）。当前的研究调查了消退和恢复是否会泛化到其他类别成员（泛化刺激，GS）。在实验1中，在用一个类别范例进行条件作用后的习得过程中，评价发生了泛化，但GS评价不受消退和恢复的影响。在实验2中，我们旨在通过在条件作用期间呈现多个类别范例来增强泛化。这加强了消退过程中评价的泛化，但没有加强恢复过程中的泛化。在实验3中，用多个范例进行条件作用导致明确和隐含的评价（使用情感启动任务测量）在习得过程中发生泛化，但在消退或恢复过程中没有泛化。无条件刺激预期的习得和消退在所有实验中都发生了泛化，但恢复仅在实验3中发生了泛化。总体而言，我们发现了在消退过程中（但不是恢复过程中）评价泛化的部分证据，并证明了无条件刺激预期的消退和恢复在评价性条件作用中会发生泛化。
