Bogong moths () can rely on the stars of the night sky to orient their migrations of distances up to 1,000 km. This navigational mechanism is likely supported by a suite of directionally tuned neurons distributed in the optic lobe, central complex, and lateral accessory lobes of the Bogong brain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Townrow and Krupenye (2025) show that bonobos will point more in a cooperative task when their partner is ignorant of the location of the desired food. While their study convincingly shows that bonobos can track ignorance, one can question whether it provides evidence that they can represent it as such. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Food-caching chickadees are known to cache thousands of food items and retrieve these caches using, at least in part, spatial memory. New research shows memory recall is associated with remote activation of hippocampal place cells by gaze using two peaks in neuronal firing: an early peak predicts the gaze direction and a later peak reflects the gaze. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The () remains the leading outlet for research on animal learning and cognition. This editorial outlines initiatives to strengthen the journal's role in advancing the field, including the introduction of a new section, Outlook, which provides brief, accessible reviews of groundbreaking studies published in high-impact journals. continues to emphasize theory-driven, rigorous empirical work across all domains of learning and cognition, welcoming studies with nonhuman animals, comparative analyses, computational approaches, and neuroscience perspectives. The journal encourages submissions on diverse topics such as associative and nonassociative learning, memory, attention, problem solving, social cognition, and decision making. To foster innovation and inclusivity, the editorial board now reflects balanced expertise in associative learning and cognition, with increased representation of women, international scholars, and early-career researchers through programs like the APA Editorial Fellowship. These efforts aim to broaden the journal's scope, promote methodological rigor, and support multidisciplinary collaboration to address complex scientific challenges. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In the ephemeral reward task, animals are presented with two choice alternatives, one optimal, the other suboptimal. Choosing the suboptimal alternative delivers one immediate reward and ends the trial, whereas choosing the optimal alternative also yields one immediate reward but allows subsequent access to the reward associated with the suboptimal alternative. While species such as cleaner wrasse and grey parrots excel at this task, others-including pigeons, primates, and rats-struggle, raising questions about the factors influencing success. This study investigated these factors by examining performance in starlings under standard and modified task conditions. Across two experiments, starlings successfully learned to prefer the optimal option. In these experiments, we occasionally included single-option trials, which allowed birds to experience the outcomes of each choice in isolation. In Experiment 2, we also manipulated the delay between the two sequential rewards to test its effect on performance. Preference for the optimal option declined as the delay increased, suggesting that shorter delays facilitate credit assignment to the initial choice. We hypothesize that shorter delays facilitate the association between initial choices and subsequent rewards and that differences in apparatus, intertrial intervals, and the rate of memory decay may also influence performance in the task. Overall, our results highlight the complexity of the ephemeral reward task and suggest the potential interplay of ecological relevance and task design. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In the Ephemeral Reward Task, a subject is presented with a choice between two stimuli, A and B. If it chooses A, it gets a reward and the trial is over. If it chooses B, it gets a reward and it can then respond to A, to obtain a second reward. Wrasse (cleaner fish) and parrots learn to choose B optimally within 100 trials, primates may also learn, whereas pigeons and rats do not. We attempted to determine why pigeons have difficulty learning their task. First, we tested the hypothesis that pigeons fail because the outcome after choice of A is similar to the outcome after a response to A given choice of B. For group AC, after the choice of B, stimulus A changed to stimulus C. For group BC, after the choice of stimulus B, stimulus B changed to stimulus C. For group BB, after the choice of stimulus B, stimulus B remained for a second reward. None of the three groups learned to choose optimally. In Experiment 2, the probability of reward for choice of stimulus A or B was reduced to 50%. Pigeons learned to choose optimally. We suggest that the difference in value between one and two rewards may not be as great as the difference in value between 0.5 and one reward. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Habituation and dishabituation are fundamental adaptive processes that govern how animals respond to repeated stimuli. Habituation is defined as a decline in response to irrelevant stimuli, and dishabituation reactivates this response upon qualitatively different stimulation. Here, we explored these processes in bumblebees () by exposing freely foraging individuals to a repeated overhead looming stimulus, followed by a distinct vibration. We identified three defensive responses-flight, disturbance leg-lift response, and startle-and found that only flight probability showed robust habituation and dishabituation. Disturbance leg-lift response remained consistently frequent, whereas startle initially increased and later declined when flight was reinstated. Our findings demonstrate clear habituation and dishabituation of defensive responses in bumblebees within a novel free-flying testing paradigm, providing initial support for response-specific plasticity mechanisms. The results underscore the importance of differentiating among multiple defensive responses to better understand the mechanisms driving habituation and dishabituation, suggesting that bumblebee defense strategies are finely tuned across multiple stimulus-response pathways. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Valid predictors of an outcome attract more attention than stimuli that are nonpredictive. Furthermore, stimuli that have a probabilistic association with an outcome attract more attention than stimuli that have a deterministic association with an outcome. Two experiments investigated whether predictive validity and outcome uncertainty resulted in the establishment of a more accurate stimulus representation, in which accuracy was measured as the strength of associations between different elements of a compound stimulus. In Experiment 1, pairs of stimuli were established as outcome predictive (always followed by the same outcome) and presented in conjunction with nonpredictive pairs of stimuli (equally likely to be followed by two different outcomes). Outcome uncertainty was also manipulated, between groups, by establishing either a deterministic (100%) or probabilistic (80%) contingency between the predictive pairs and their outcomes. The test trials revealed more accurate recognition for which predictive stimuli were paired together relative to nonpredictive stimuli; however, there was no effect of outcome uncertainty. Experiment 2 reproduced the effect observed in the deterministic group from Experiment 1 and also demonstrated that the superior performance to the predictive stimuli over the nonpredictive stimuli was only evident when, at test, the choice stimuli had predicted different outcomes during training. These results were interpreted as the consequence of two pathways to accurate stimulus representation: direct (within-compound associations) and indirect (mediated through the activation of the outcome) and are discussed in the context of attentional theories of associative learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

DeepLabCut, a deep-learning-based network for markerless pose estimation, has been used to track the acquisition and development of tool use in a nontool-using corvid species. This development has the potential to lead to new lines of research understanding how tool and motor expertise develop at the behavioral, neural, cognitive, and evolutionary level. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Reports an error in "The spatiotemporal dynamics of conditioned behavior: First-order and higher-order conditioning" by Victor M. Navarro, Dominic M. Dwyer and Robert C. Honey (, 2025[Apr], Vol 51[2], 92-102; see record 2026-02046-003). The article had the incorrect open access license listed in the author note due to a processing error. The correct open access license for the article is CC BY 4.0; https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0. The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2026-02046-003). Pavlovian conditioning procedures generate spatially and temporally distinct behaviors. For example, after rats have received pairings of a lever with food, they approach the food well during the lever (called goal-tracking) and interact with it (called sign-tracking), with these two spatially distinct behaviors being distributed differently across the temporal duration of the lever. Experiment 1 assessed the development of these spatiotemporally defined behaviors during first-order conditioning, as a function of the sequence in which the lever and food occurred (lever→food or food→lever) and the interval between them (1 s or 11 s). In Experiment 2, the same rats received higher-order conditioning trials in which an auditory stimulus was paired with the lever and the emergence of goal-tracking to the auditory stimulus was assessed. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 revealed dissociations between where and when learning was evident during first- and higher-order conditioning, underscoring the need for models of Pavlovian conditioning to explain both the nature and timing of different conditioned responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

We report three large experiments ( = 440 in total) investigating the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) at Fp3 on perceptual learning indexed by the face inversion effect (FIE). Experiments employed a double-blinded design, with participants randomly allocated to different tDCS groups. They then participated in an old/new recognition task involving both upright and inverted faces. Consistent with previous research, our findings indicate that anodal tDCS reduces the FIE compared to sham tDCS/control by impairing the recognition performance of upright faces. Crucially, our experiments introduced novel evidence suggesting that cathodal tDCS at Fp3 can reverse the effects of anodal tDCS, thereby restoring the FIE and performance for upright faces to typical levels. Across all three experiments, participants who received anodal tDCS followed by cathodal tDCS exhibited no reduction in the FIE nor impaired performance for upright faces. Moreover, Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that participants who only received cathodal tDCS showed no difference in the FIE compared to the sham/control group. This indicates that the effects of cathodal tDCS are specific to reversing the negative impact of anodal tDCS rather than affecting baseline performance. These results underscore that the detrimental effects of anodal tDCS on the FIE can be reversed through the application of cathodal tDCS. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Habituation is a form of learning characterized by a decreased response to repeated stimuli. Research has shown that the interval between stimuli (interstimulus interval [ISI]) influences the development and retention of habituation. Experiments 1-4 examined earthworm contraction-response habituation to light using ISIs ranging from 2 to 256 s. Experiment 1 showed an inverted-U in response probability across ISIs: very short (2-8 s) and very long (128-256 s) ISIs produced greater within-session decrements than intermediate ISIs (16-88 s). Experiment 2 found that 128-256 s yielded faster, larger decrements than 88 s, with group differences persisting 24 hr later when all animals were tested at 4 s. Experiment 3 focused on ISIs of 2-64 s with extended training (50 trials): on Day 1, 32 s yielded the least within-session decrement, and under the common 4-s Day 2 test, only the 64-s group showed evidence of retention of habituation. Experiment 4 replicated the key patterns when comparing ISIs of 4, 32, and 128 s: 128 s produced the largest short- and long-term decrements. Experiments 5 and 6 introduced an air puff and demonstrated stimulus specificity of the 128-s ISI condition. Day 2 responding was lowest when the Day 2 stimulus matched Day 1 (light-light; puff-puff), whereas switching stimuli (light-puff; puff-light) reduced or eliminated this carryover. Overall, the ISI-dependent patterns and stimulus-specificity effects observed here confirm the value of this animal model as a preparation for studying habituation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This study explores the role of convergent versus independent pathways in a neural network model to simulate blocking (Blk) and second-order conditioning (SOC). Convergent connections refer to the intersection of connections from one hidden layer unit to an adjacent unit in feedforward neural networks, whereas independent pathways involve exclusive, nonconverging connections. This research compares five network architectures with varying degrees of convergent connectivity in SOC and Blk. These phenomena are relevant as they illustrate how prior reinforcement history influences learning about a second stimulus, either by enhancing or inhibiting the conditioned response to it. The findings indicate that networks with convergent connections better replicate Blk than SOC, whereas those with independent pathways more accurately model SOC than Blk. Some exceptions were observed, which may have implications for the conceptual analysis of deep learning models. Future work could incorporate theoretical insights into the underlying mechanisms of stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response associations. Additionally, the findings from this study could inform model-driven hypotheses in neurobehavioral research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Recently, a principle known as theory protection has been proposed to explain the way people bias the updating of their beliefs when they encounter new information about ambiguous cues. This principle presents an alternative to the proposal that a combination of individual and summed prediction error contributes to learning in situations where combinations of predictive cues are presented as potential causes of an outcome. Here, we discuss similarities between the notion of theory protection and attention shifting models of learning that assume attention is guided by individual prediction error. We report simulations using a prominent attention shifting model in the category learning literature and show that it accounts for several of the key examples of theory protection. The basis of these learning biases, hypothesized to be determined by either cue uncertainty or prediction error, is yet to be determined and requires further tests that dissociate these factors more clearly. It may be the case that theory protection is better understood as an organizing principle for knowledge updating rather than a single psychological mechanism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Binz et al. (2025) describe several ways that -a new computational model that "captures" human behavior better than alternatives-can help develop a new unified theory of cognition. In this commentary, we evaluate several of these roles in light of recent achievements and empirical data, recommending increasingly explicit scrutiny of the various modeling roles that Centaur might play in developing new explanatory theories of human cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Black garden ants become more aggressive with repeated encounters of ants from another nest. Recent experimental evidence suggests that associative learning contributes to holding such a "grudge." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous studies involving birds and humans have identified spatial proximity as a source of overshadowing between landmarks in navigation. In Herrera et al. (2024), subjects were trained in an open environment to locate a hidden goal with reference to an array of four landmarks placed at varying distances from it. Critically, two of the four landmarks (i.e., target landmarks) were placed at distances that were common among groups, whereas the remaining two were either proximal to, or distal from, them. Landmarks near the goal overshadowed (i.e., competed with) learning about the further ones, and this effect disappeared in the groups trained with distal landmarks. However, neither of these studies included a control group providing a baseline performance to assess the extent of competition; were the data indicative of overshadowing or facilitation of learning? Thus, we assessed whether spatial proximity determines overshadowing or facilitation between landmarks, including a control group trained with the target landmarks only. We conducted three experiments with varying training lengths: six training trials in Experiments 1 and 16 in Experiments 2 and 3. We also extended the landmark-goal distance in Experiment 3. In all experiments, we observed overshadowing in groups trained with closer nontarget landmarks (relative to the target) but no overshadowing when the nontarget landmarks were distal from the target landmarks. Overall, these experiments reveal that landmark-goal distance determines overshadowing between landmarks, a finding consistent with domain-general theories of learning, such as a modification of Pearce's configural model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This study investigated the effects of habituation to different light intensities on the head retraction response in the earthworm Dendrobaena veneta using a t1-t2 experimental design. Twenty-four adult earthworms were randomly assigned to two groups, each habituated with either 700 lux or 6,300 lux light (80 trials). Head retraction responses to 700, 2,100, and 6,300 lux were measured in pre- and posthabituation phases, with stimuli presented in a pseudorandomized order. Statistical analyses showed that, prior to habituation, responsiveness increased with light intensity across all subjects. During habituation, both groups exhibited significant declines in responsiveness, but the group exposed to 6,300 lux showed a steeper and more sustained decrease compared to the 700 lux group. Posthabituation testing demonstrated that worms habituated with 6,300 lux exhibited a generalized reduction in responsiveness across all test intensities, whereas the 700 lux group maintained an intensity-dependent response pattern. These findings challenge the traditional view that lower stimulus intensity leads to stronger habituation and instead indicate that higher intensity stimuli can produce more generalized and persistent habituation effects. The results emphasize the importance of distinguishing between learning and performance in habituation studies and highlight the value of standardized procedures for comparative research on nonassociative learning in invertebrates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Trial-based theories of associative learning propose that learning is sensitive to the probability of reinforcement signaled by a conditioned stimulus (CS). Learning, however, is often sensitive to reinforcement rate rather than probability of reinforcement per trial, suggesting that temporal properties of cues may be more important than trial-based properties. In four experiments, the role of probability of reinforcement per trial was examined in appetitive Pavlovian conditioning in mice under conditions in which reinforcement rate was controlled. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the loss of conditioned responding caused by overexpectation of reinforcement. The probability of reinforcement per trial failed to affect acquisition and summation of conditioned responding and failed to affect overexpectation. It also failed to affect extinction of conditioned responding in Experiments 3 and 4. Experiments 2-4 contained nonreinforced trials in which responding at the offset of the CS could be measured. These probe trials did reveal an effect of probability of reinforcement per trial. Cues associated with 100% reinforcement elicited greater post-CS responding than cues associated with 50% reinforcement. The effect was also evident in summation trials (in Experiment 2) in which two 100% or 50% reinforced cues were presented in compound. The results show that mice learn about rate and probability information, but reinforcement rate determines anticipatory responding during the CS. The probability of reinforcement determines responding at the expected time of reinforcement. Thus, learning occurs continuously over the duration of experience and per episode of experience independent of duration. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous research on Pavlovian conditioning has shown that the duration of the intertrial interval (ITI) can function like a contextual stimulus, modulating responding to an upcoming conditioned stimulus. Here, four operant learning experiments with rats investigated whether ITIs can similarly modulate operant responding occasioned by a discriminative stimulus (SD). In Experiment 1, responding for one group was reinforced during a 10-s SD when it was preceded by a 4-min ITI but not when it was preceded by a 1-min ITI (4+/1- discrimination). A second group had the opposite discrimination, 1+/4-. As seen with Pavlovian conditioning, rats could acquire discriminative control with the 4+/1- but not with the 1+/4- discrimination. Additional experiments investigated whether control by a temporal context in the 4+/1- discrimination transfers across physical contexts (i.e., the context provided by the operant chamber). In Experiment 2, rats learned the 4+/1- discrimination in one context (Context A), and the discrimination failed to transfer to a different context (Context B). In Experiment 3, the 4+/1- discrimination also failed to transfer to Context B when experience with reinforcers was equated across contexts. Experiment 4 found evidence of transfer, however, when rats had learned a second, nontemporal discrimination, in Context B. Overall, the findings suggest that ITI duration can acquire conditional control of discriminated operants in a manner similar to Pavlovian conditioned responses. The ITI arguably sets the occasion for a stimulus that itself sets the occasion for responding. Moreover, the control created by time can transfer across physical contexts under some conditions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Pavlovian conditioning plays a crucial role in promoting well-being and supporting healthy behaviors but also contributes to the development of diseases and psychopathologies. Much of the basic and applied research on these conditioning processes has focused on external or exteroceptive cues (tone, spider, context, and brewery) as the conditioned stimulus (CS) or occasion setter. Considerably less empirical effort has been devoted to studying Pavlovian conditioning involving internal or interoceptive stimuli, such as indigestion, low blood sugar, back pain, or drug intoxication function as the CS or occasion setter. In this targeted review, we focus on our research on the interoceptive stimulus effects of nicotine. We summarize methods employing discriminated goal-tracking that have been refined over the years to investigate how the function of the nicotine stimulus changes with excitatory or inhibitory conditioning protocols. That research provides substantive evidence indicating that what is known about Pavlovian conditioning with exteroceptive stimuli generally holds for the nicotine stimulus-extinction, CS salience, generalization, overshadowing, blocking, conditioned inhibition, devaluation, and overexpectation. Extension of the interoceptive conditioning methodology to include intravenous nicotine as a stimulus found that the nicotine stimulus acquires additional reinforcing value when previously paired with an appetitive outcome. In closing this review, we highlight notable gaps in the literature and discuss potential directions for research and conceptual development. Ultimately, we hope to encourage others to consider the intersection of interoception and Pavlovian conditioning in their area of scientific inquiry. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Habits are important in everyday life and are thought to be involved in several human behavioral pathologies, including addictions. Experiments with rats suggest that habit, as indexed by insensitivity of an instrumental response to separate devaluation of its outcome, develops with extended practice. Motivated behavior often involves a sequence or chain of behaviors (Rs), with each cued by a different discriminative stimulus (S). We therefore examined performance of a two-response discriminated heterogeneous behavior chain (R1-R2) in which R1 and R2 were occasioned by different Ss and were both required to earn a reinforcer. We further asked whether extended training decreases the sensitivity of R1 to the extinction of R2, which is known to decrease R1 and is analogous to an outcome devaluation effect. In Experiment 1 with rats, R1 was sensitive to extinction of R2 after moderate but not extended training, suggesting the development of habit. In Experiment 2, human participants learned three R1-R2 chains before one "R2" was extinguished. Extinction of R2 specifically decreased performance of the R1 that had been associated with it, but extended training did not reduce this effect. Based on findings in the nonhuman literature, Experiment 3 then had human participants learn only one R1-R2 chain before R2 was extinguished. Under these conditions, R1 became insensitive to extinction of R2 after extended training, consistent with the idea that habit can develop in a laboratory experiment with humans. The findings are discussed relative to difficulties demonstrating habits in humans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Pavlovian conditioning procedures generate spatially and temporally distinct behaviors. For example, after rats have received pairings of a lever with food, they approach the food well during the lever (called goal-tracking) and interact with it (called sign-tracking), with these two spatially distinct behaviors being distributed differently across the temporal duration of the lever. Experiment 1 assessed the development of these spatiotemporally defined behaviors during first-order conditioning, as a function of the sequence in which the lever and food occurred (lever→food or food→lever) and the interval between them (1 s or 11 s). In Experiment 2, the same rats received higher-order conditioning trials in which an auditory stimulus was paired with the lever and the emergence of goal-tracking to the auditory stimulus was assessed. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 revealed dissociations between where and when learning was evident during first- and higher-order conditioning, underscoring the need for models of Pavlovian conditioning to explain both the nature and timing of different conditioned responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Sign-tracking behavior, also known as "autoshaping," is defined as the approach and interaction with reward-predictive cues. It is associated with addiction-related phenotypes and compulsive behavior. Several previous studies have demonstrated that when there is uncertainty about reward properties (e.g., probability and magnitude), sign tracking is increased. However, the effect of cue uncertainty on sign-tracking behavior is not known. Here, using a Pavlovian conditioning paradigm, we held the duration of cues constant and manipulated the temporal uncertainty by implementing either fixed or variable intertrial intervals (ITIs) of different durations across groups of mice. Variable ITIs create temporal uncertainty about when the next cue will occur as well as uncertainty about the interval from the last reward until the next one. We found that temporal uncertainty during acquisition significantly enhances sign tracking, which persists during extinction, even when ITI variability was different in the extinction session than in the acquisition session. This suggests that the effects of temporal uncertainty are learned and retained rather than performance based. Our results demonstrate that sign-tracking behavior is not only modified by the characteristic of the reward, but it can also be modified by uncertainty regarding cues. These findings highlight how temporal predictability shapes cue-directed behaviors and has implications for understanding addiction and compulsive disorders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Latent inhibition refers to the observation, made in both human and nonhuman animals, that learning about the relationship between a stimulus and an outcome progresses more rapidly when the stimulus is novel compared to when the stimulus has been rendered familiar by preexposure. Three experiments with human participants show that this effect can be reversed to reveal faster learning about a familiar than a novel stimulus, by manipulating the novelty/familiarity of the experimental context. In each experiment, during Stage 1, a preexposed stimulus was rendered familiar by being repeatedly presented within a stream of distractor letters that constituted the experimental context. In a subsequent training stage, participants were required to respond to a target outcome that was preceded by the familiar stimulus on some trials and a novel stimulus on others. These trials were also presented within a stream of contextual distractor stimuli. The results showed that during the training stage, learning about the familiar stimulus proceeded more successfully than the novel stimulus when the distractor stimuli sustained novelty during training (Experiments 1-3), but that this effect could be reverted to latent inhibition when the distractor stimuli sustained familiarity during training (Experiments 2 and 3). The results are in keeping with a novelty-mismatch analysis of latent inhibition, and a novelty-mediated generalization explanation of the results is proposed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In three experiments, participants were asked to mentally count how many target stimuli appeared in a sequence of presentations, without informing them that there were two types of stimuli (AX and BX) with a specific difference. Some participants received intermixed AX and BX presentations (INT groups), while others received the presentations in blocks (BLK groups). In all three experiments, the INT group showed a greater ability to differentiate the stimuli in a posttest compared to the BLK group. In Experiment 1a, where AX and BX were drawings of plants that differed in the number of petals, the improvement in differentiation was accompanied by the ability to identify the specific difference. However, in Experiments 1b and 2, where AX and BX were robots with a more subtle difference in eye separation, the improvement in differentiation occurred without participants being able to indicate what the difference between the stimuli was. These results suggest that intermixed preexposure can generate, without the need for initial instructions to look for differences between stimuli, both explicit (Experiment 1a) and implicit (Experiments 1b and 2) beneficial effects on stimulus differentiation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In a learning environment, with multiple predictive cues for a single outcome, cues interfere with or enhance each other during the acquisition process (e.g., Baker et al., 1993). Previous experiments have focused on cues that signal the presence or absence of binary outcomes. This introduces a perceptual and perhaps motivational asymmetry between excitatory and inhibitory learning. Here, using a bidirectional outcome, we asked whether learning about both generative (incremental positive outcome) and preventative (incremental negative outcome) causal cues show similar enhancement effects in opposite directions. In three experiments with humans using predictive learning tasks, participants (N = 133) were exposed to probabilistic predictive cues for opposite polarity events. Generative cues caused an increase in outcome likelihood, while preventative cues decreased it. An analysis of explicit predictive ratings found evidence for symmetrical learning and enhanced learning for both generative and preventative cues. The results are discussed in relation to super learning, an effect derived from theories of competitive learning based on error correction and theories of contrasting probability estimates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Extinction may alter the representation of a cue (e.g., it becomes less salient). To assess that idea, three groups learned to suppress mouse clicking in a video game in negative-patterning (X+/Y+/XY-) and positive-patterning (Z+/W+/ZW++) discriminations followed by extinction of X and Z. The negative-patterning discrimination should depend on a configural cue that is dependent on the representation of X and Y. Removal of the excitatory influence of X should further reduce responding to XY. In contrast, if extinction alters the representation of X, the original XY configural cue supporting the discrimination should also be changed, affecting inhibitory control, increasing responding to XY. Following patterning, groups received extinction in the same context as training (Ext A), a different context (Ext B), or received no extinction (no extinction). All stimuli were tested in Context A. Group no extinction showed negative patterning; suppression to X and Y was greater than to XY while suppression to Z, W, and ZW was equally strong. In group Ext A extinction reduced suppression to X, increased suppression to XY, reversed the X/XY discrimination, and weakened the Y/XY discrimination. Extinction of Z reduced suppression to Z with no effect on W or ZW. Group Ext B showed renewal of X and a renewal of the X/XY and Y/XY discriminations. Results suggest some form of representational change in X occurred during extinction disrupting the original XY configural cue that was dependent on that representation. Findings are discussed with respect to theories of associative learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In Pavlovian conditioning, the strength of a conditioned response is a function of the probability of reinforcement. However, manipulations of probability are often confounded with changes in the rate of reinforcement. Two between-group experiments in mice evaluated the effect of the probability of reinforcement, while controlling the rate of reinforcement, on appetitive conditioning and extinction. Experiment 1 equated the reinforcement rate by manipulating the number of reinforcements received in each reinforced trial in a critical group (one vs. two consecutive rewards). The results of this experiment showed that probability influenced the rate of responses in acquisition, even when controlling the reinforcement rate. Experiment 2 further assessed the role of probability on behavior while controlling the rate of reinforcement during the conditioned stimulus (CS) using a split-trial design, in which the total CS time was held constant but presented in different numbers of discrete trials (e.g., 50% reinforcement with two 12 s CS's vs. 100% reinforcement with a 24 s average CS duration). This experiment confirmed that probability influenced response rates, and both the probability and rate of reinforcement affected the proportion of trials with responses. Together, these results suggest that the probability of reinforcement, while having little effect on the speed at which responses emerged, affects responding even when the rate of reinforcement is held constant. The results challenge formal learning theories to account for the effects of both the probability and rate of reinforcement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The expression of an association between a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an unconditioned stimulus (US) can be attenuated by presenting the CS by itself (i.e., extinction, Ext). Though effective, Ext is susceptible to recovery effects such as renewal, spontaneous recovery, and reinstatement. Dunsmoor et al. (2015, 2019) have proposed that pairing the CS with a neutral outcome (novelty-facilitated Ext [NFE]) could offer better protection against recovery effects than Ext. Though NFE has been compared to Ext, it has rarely been compared to counterconditioning (CC), a similar procedure except that the CS is paired with a US having a valence opposite to the US used in initial training. We report two aversive conditioning experiments using the rapid-trial streaming procedure with human participants that compare the efficacies and susceptibilities to ABA renewal of Ext, CC, and NFE. Associative learning was assessed through expectancy learning and evaluative conditioning. CC and NFE equally decreased anticipation of the US in the presence of the CS (i.e., expectancy learning). Depending on how the CS-US association was probed, they were either as or more effective at doing so than Ext. All three interference treatments were equally susceptible to context manipulations. Only CC clearly altered the valence of the CS (i.e., evaluative conditioning). Valence ratings after Ext, CC, and NFE, as well as a no-interference control condition, were all equally susceptible to context effects. Overall, the present study does not support the assertion that NFE is consistently more resistant to recovery effects than Ext. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).