Associative models of discrimination and generalisation: an evaluation in Pavlovian conditoning and causal judgement paradigms

从基本生存到日常生活，学习都是人类的基础。这种无处不在的现象在自然界中是相匹配的，在进化尺度的所有部分，动物都表现出学习能力。成功的学习科学研究包括确定目标行为和制定适当的研究程序。我们的项目关注的是人们如何学习预测事件，并使用收敛运算来衡量业绩。基于巴甫洛夫使用唾液反射来衡量学习的开创性贡献，联想理论现在已经远远超出了对动物反射的研究，表明人类行为的非常不同的方面可以通过联想模型来解决。联想理论中的关键问题之一是明确多重刺激是如何被感知和处理的。例如，巴甫洛夫的铃声出现在一个包含大量背景声音和视觉刺激的背景中。此外，对任何刺激措施的反应都取决于背景。在不同的化合物(或语境)中对相同的刺激做出不同的反应是解决许多问题的基础。我们的建议旨在测试巴甫洛夫眨眼条件反射和因果判断范式中表示刺激化合物的竞争性联想模型的预测。这些表面上非常不同的程序，一个基于简单的反射，另一个基于“更高层次”的认知过程，有许多共同的属性。通过使用这些不同的范例，我们将检验我们结论的一般性。

Learning is fundamental to humans from basic survival to everyday live. This ubiquity is matched in nature where animals in all parts of the evolutionary scale demonstrate learning. Successful scientific study of learning involves identification of the target behaviour and development of suitable study procedures. Our project is concerned with how people learn to predict events and uses convergent operations to measure performance. Based upon Pavlov's seminal contribution to use salivary reflexes to measure learning, associative theory has now been extended way beyond the study of reflexes in animals, showing that very different aspects of human behaviour can be addressed by associative models. One of the key problems in associative theory is to specify how multiple stimuli are perceived and processed. For example, Pavlov's bell occurred in a context containing numerous background sounds and visual stimuli. Furthermore, responses to any stimulus depend on the context. Responding differently to the same stimulus in different compounds (or contexts) is fundamental to the solution of many problems. Our proposal aims to test the predictions of competing associative models for the representation of stimulus compounds in Pavlovian eyeblink conditioning and causal judgement paradigms. These superficially very different procedures, one based on simple reflexes the other on "higher-order" cognitive processes, share many attributes. By using these different paradigms we will test the generality of our conclusions.