Affective learning: Awareness and aversion

In two studies, we investigated the influence of aversive and nonaversive reinforcers on startle reactivity, visceral responses, and self‐report during Pavlovian conditioning. Furthermore, we assessed how awareness of the stimulus contingencies affect conditioned discrimination in the different resp...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychophysiology 1996-11, Vol.33 (6), p.698-710
Main Authors: HAMM, ALFONS O., VAITL, DIETER
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Awareness
Awareness - physiology
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Contingency learning
Fear conditioning
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Learning - physiology
Male
Miscellaneous
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reflex, Startle - physiology
Skin conductance
Skin Physiological Phenomena
Startle eyeblink
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In two studies, we investigated the influence of aversive and nonaversive reinforcers on startle reactivity, visceral responses, and self‐report during Pavlovian conditioning. Furthermore, we assessed how awareness of the stimulus contingencies affect conditioned discrimination in the different response systems. Conditioned potentiation of the startle response was only observed in the context of aversive learning. Moreover, blink potentiation occurred without awareness of the relationship between the conditioned and unconditioned stimulus. In contrast, skin conductance conditioning was independent of the aversiveness of the reinforcer and was only obtained for those individuals who could correctly verbalize the stimulus contingency in a postconditioning recognition test. Cardiac responses varied with the task demands of the situation and covaried with individual response stereotypes.
ISSN:0048-5772
1469-8986
1540-5958
DOI:10.1111/j.1469-8986.1996.tb02366.x