Further evidence for the role of temporal contiguity as a determinant of overshadowing

Three experiments explored whether weakening temporal contiguity between auditory cues and an outcome attenuated cue-competition in an avoidance learning task with human participants. Overall, with strong temporal contiguity between auditory cues and the outcome during training (the offset of the predictive auditory signals concurred with the onset of the outcome), the target cue trained as part of a compound yielded less avoidance behaviour than the control cue trained alone, an instance of overshadowing. However, weakening temporal contiguity during training (inserting a 5s trace) attenuated overshadowing, resulting in similar avoidance behaviour in response to the control and the target cues. Moreover, as predicted by a recent modification of Pearce’s configural theory (Pearce, 1987; see Herrera et al., 2022), temporal contiguity was critical in determining cue competition.

三项实验旨在探究，在人类被试参与的回避学习任务（avoidance learning task）中，削弱听觉线索（auditory cues）与结果间的时间连续性（temporal contiguity），是否会缓解线索竞争（cue-competition）效应。整体而言，当训练阶段听觉线索与结果间存在强时间连续性时（即预测性听觉信号的终止与该结果的出现同步），以复合刺激形式训练的目标线索所引发的回避行为量，低于单独训练的对照线索，这属于遮蔽效应（overshadowing）的典型实例。然而，在训练阶段削弱时间连续性（插入5秒的痕迹间隔）可缓解遮蔽效应，使得对照线索与目标线索引发的回避行为量趋于一致。此外，正如皮尔斯构型理论（Pearce’s configural theory）的最新修正版本所预测的那样（Pearce, 1987；参见Herrera等，2022），时间连续性是决定线索竞争效应的核心因素。