Competition and facilitation during learning: Searching for domain general principles.

在日常生活和认知的任何领域，人类通过使用来自多个不同来源的信息来解决任务和做出决策。很明显，我们从以前的经验中吸取了教训。然后，我们使用多种信息来源来指导我们在环境中的行为，做出对我们有益的决定，并在社会情境中采取行动（归因，模仿）。然而，大多数时候，并不是环境中的所有信息都是有用的。例如，如果我们吃鱼和薯条，后来生病了，很难知道这两者中的哪一个让我们生病，人们倾向于根据数量选择一个或另一个。事实上，人类特别善于选择和学习那些提供相关结果信息的来源。因此，不同信息源之间的竞争的想法在学习理论中一直很突出。社会科学和心理学中的大量数据支持这一论断。然而，在学习过程中多个信息源竞争的发现并不普遍。在某些领域（即，空间学习、类别学习）和在使用动物的实验中，研究人员发现了多种信息来源之间的促进作用（与竞争相反），这导致了解释这些发现的特定理论的发展，假设它们是“例外”。因此，有旨在解释竞争的理论，也有旨在解释促进的理论，但对于导致这两种相反结果之一的情况没有达成共识。主要基于在非人类动物中进行的实验，Urcelay最近假设竞争和促进是由多个变量决定的连续体的两个极端。这一提议的目的是检验连续性（即事件在时间和空间上的分离）是否是这些相反发现的关键决定因素。我们预测，竞争和促进是可以在不同的任务和认知领域中观察到的现象。因此，我们将在不同的学习准备中测试这个一般预测，并增加复杂性。首先，我们希望确定是否观察到竞争和促进作为一个功能的时间间隔之间的假设的食物消费和疾病的预测方案，如上述食物疾病的例子。第二个目标是将这些发现扩展到行动结果任务。结果一致的学习是主体意识、自由意志和责任感的基础。我们将研究在参与者的行为（即，按下按钮）和其他环境事件（信号）在学习期间同时呈现。我们将在操纵行动和结果之间的时间的同时做到这一点。我们预测，当结果在行动后不久呈现时，刺激将与行动-结果学习竞争，但当结果延迟时，情况正好相反。这与人类行为有关，因为我们的大多数行为都有延迟的结果（例如，为退休储蓄;为孩子的出生做准备）。本提案的最终目标是研究空间学习中的预测，将上述目标整合到更复杂和生态有效的环境中，同时将预测扩展到空间分离。值得注意的是，在空间学习的竞争和促进已被观察到，但这些不一致的结果的确切原因尚未阐明。在这三个目标中，我们将进一步研究这三个场景中竞争和促进的心理机制（参与者是将不同的信息作为单独的元素还是作为一个整体来处理）。这些发现对学习理论和教育都有重要意义。

In any domain of daily life and cognition, humans solve tasks and make decisions by using information that comes from multiple, different sources. It is quite obvious that we learn from previous experiences. We then use multiple sources of information to guide our behaviour in environments, make decisions about what is beneficial for us, and act in social situations (attributions, imitation). Most times however, not all information in the environment is useful. For example, if we eat fish and chips and later become ill, it is difficult to know which of the two made us ill, and people tend to select one or the other based on quantity. In fact, humans are particularly adept at selecting and learning from those sources which provide information about relevant outcomes. Hence, the idea of competition between different sources of information has been prominent in theories of learning. A wealth of data in the social sciences and psychology supports this assertion. Yet, the finding that multiple sources of information compete during learning is not ubiquitous. In some fields (i.e., spatial learning, category learning) and in experiments using animals, researchers have found facilitation (the opposite of competition) between multiple sources of information, and this has led to the development of specific theories that explain those findings, by assuming they are "exceptions". Thus, there are theories aimed at explaining competition, and theories aimed at explaining facilitation, but no consensus regarding the circumstances that lead to either of these opposite outcomes. Based predominantly on experiments conducted in nonhuman animals, Urcelay has recently hypothesized that competition and facilitation are two extremes of a continuum which is determined by multiple variables. The objective of this proposal is to test whether contiguity (that is, the temporal and spatial separation of events) is a critical determinant of these opposite findings. We predict that competition and facilitation are phenomena that can be observed across different tasks and domains of cognition. Therefore, we will test this general prediction across different learning preparations with increasing complexity. First, we wish to determine whether competition and facilitation are observed as a function of temporal separation between hypothetical food consumption and sickness in a predictive scenario such as the food-disease example mentioned above. The second objective is to extend these findings to an action-outcome task. Action-outcome learning underlies the sense of agency, free will and responsibility. We will investigate whether competition or facilitation are observed in a task in which participants' actions (i.e., press a button) and other environmental events (a signal) are presented simultaneously during learning. We will do this whilst manipulating the time between action and the outcome. We predict that when outcomes are presented soon after the action, stimuli will compete with action-outcome learning, but that the opposite will occur when outcomes are delayed. This is relevant to human behaviour because most of our actions are followed by delayed outcomes (e.g., saving for retirement; preparing for a child's birth). The final objective of this proposal is to investigate this prediction in spatial learning, which integrates the above mentioned objectives in a more complex and ecologically valid setting, whilst extending the prediction to spatial separation. Notably, in spatial learning both competition and facilitation have been observed, but the exact reasons for these discrepant findings have not been elucidated. In all three objectives, we will further investigate the psychological mechanisms (whether participants process different bits of information as separate elements, or as a whole) underlying competition and facilitation in these three scenarios. These findings have important implications for theories of learning, and for education.