Miller R R, Matute H
Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Binghamton 13902-6000, USA.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 1996 Dec;125(4):370-86. doi: 10.1037//0096-3445.125.4.370.
Similarities between Pavlovian conditioning in nonhumans and causal judgment by humans suggest that similar processes operate in these situations. Notably absent among the similarities is backward blocking (i.e., retrospective devaluation of a signal due to increased valuation of another signal that was present during training), which has been observed in causal judgment by humans but not in Pavlovian responding by animals. The authors used rats to determine if this difference arises from the target cue being biologically significant in the Pavlovian case but not in causal judgment. They used a sensory preconditioning procedure in Experiments 1 and 2, in which the target cue retained low biological significance during the treatment, and obtained backward blocking. The authors found in Experiment 3 that forward blocking also requires the target cue to be of low biological significance. Thus, low biological significance is a necessary condition for a stimulus to be vulnerable to blocking.
非人类的巴甫洛夫条件反射与人类的因果判断之间的相似性表明，在这些情况下存在相似的过程。值得注意的是，相似性中没有反向阻断现象（即由于对训练期间出现的另一个信号估值增加而对一个信号进行追溯性贬值），这种现象在人类的因果判断中已被观察到，但在动物的巴甫洛夫反应中未被观察到。作者使用大鼠来确定这种差异是否源于在巴甫洛夫条件反射中目标线索具有生物学意义，而在因果判断中则不然。他们在实验1和实验2中使用了感觉预条件作用程序，其中目标线索在处理过程中保持较低的生物学意义，并获得了反向阻断。作者在实验3中发现，正向阻断也要求目标线索具有较低的生物学意义。因此，低生物学意义是刺激易受阻断影响的必要条件。
