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FB Kolloq WS 23/24: Mark Haselgrove

„Local and global changes in outcome associability during learning”

Veranstaltungsdaten

Prof. Dr. Mark Haselgrove, University of Nottingham, UK
„Local and global changes in outcome associability during learning”

An enduring puzzle in the study of learning is to understand the circumstances of association. What is it that makes a stimulus more or less associable? For many years the focus of this question has centred on the associability of cues, with empirical advances following theories of learning such as the Mackintosh (1975) and Pearce and Hall (1980) equations which posit changes in the asso-ciability of predictors of outcomes during learning. However, taking a step back, it wasn’t always like this. The Rescorla-Wagner (1972) model empha-sised the associability of the outcome - the “effectiveness of reinforcement” - to help us understand the circumstances of association. In this talk we will con-sider two strands of evidence that investigate the associability of the outcome in learning. A first group of experiments manipulated the relative validity of the features of an outcome, investigating whether the kinds of competition ef-fects observed between the features of a cue can also be observed between the features of an outcome. A second group of experiments examined whether the associability of an outcome transfers to cues beyond those which established it as either well or poorly predicted. Together, the results of these experiments can be understood in terms of a two-factor theory which posits local (cue-specific) and global (cue-general) changes in outcome associability.