Associative and Propositional Processes in Human Evaluative Conditioning

对任何人来说，一项基本任务就是了解环境中哪些物体是积极的，哪些是消极的。这个想法与所有人都倾向于寻求快乐并试图避免痛苦的观念产生共鸣。评价条件反射是获得对客体的积极和消极反应的最重要途径之一，它涉及到条件刺激（CS）与积极或消极的非条件刺激（US）的配对而导致对其评价的变化。评价条件作用通常用记忆中联想链接的自动形成来解释。然而，最近联想理论受到命题理论的挑战，命题理论将CS评价的变化归因于环境中关于CS- us关系的命题知识的非自动获取和验证。当前项目的主要目标是推进联想过程和命题过程不是相互排斥的想法，而是同时促进评价条件作用。具体来说，这两种学习机制可以独立地影响一个对象的心理表征，从而影响对该对象的评价反应。该项目的研究结果将对科学理解对环境中物体产生积极和消极反应的基本机制具有重要意义。此外，预期的调查结果将具有重要的社会经济影响，因为它们涉及与获得和改变评价答复有关的广泛问题。

An essential task for any human being is to learn which objects in the environment are positive and which ones are negative. This idea resonates with the notion that all human beings tend to seek pleasure and try to avoid pain. One of the most important ways to acquire positive and negative responses to objects is evaluative conditioning, which involves the change in the evaluation of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to its pairing with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). Evaluative conditioning effects are typically explained by the automatic formation of associative links in memory. More recently, however, associative theories have been challenged by propositional theories which attribute changes in the evaluation of a CS to the non-automatic acquisition and validation of propositional knowledge about CS-US relations in the environment. The main goal of the current project is to advance the idea that associative and propositional processes are not mutually exclusive, but instead contribute simultaneously to evaluative conditioning effects. Specifically, it is argued that the two learning mechanisms can independently influence the mental representation of an object, and thereby evaluative responses to that object. The findings of this project will have important implications for the scientific understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the acquisition of positive and negative responses to objects in the environment. In addition, the expected findings will have important socio-economic implications due to their relevance for a wide range of questions related to the acquisition and change of evaluative responses.