1. Prior experience can influence whether the whole is different from the sum of its parts
- Author
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Melchers, Klaus G., Lachnit, Harald, Üngör, Metin, and Shanks, David R.
- Subjects
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CLASSICAL conditioning , *CONDITIONED response , *LEARNING , *GALVANIC skin response - Abstract
Abstract: In two conditioning experiments with humans, we found that participants’ prior experience exerted considerable influence on later learning of configural discrimination problems. Prior experience was manipulated by pre-training participants before the main acquisition stage. They either received a discrimination problem that encouraged an elemental solution (A+, B−, AB+, CD− in Experiment 1 and A+, AB+, C−, CB− in Experiment 2) or one that required a configural solution (AB+, BC−, CD+, DA− in Experiment 1 and A−, AB+, C+, CB− in Experiment 2). Then, all participants were shown a discrimination that required a configural solution (E+, F+, EF− in Experiment 1 and DE+, EF−, FG+, GD− in Experiment 2). In both experiments, participants who had received elemental pre-training were impaired on the later configural problem compared to participants who had received configural pre-training. The results suggest that organisms can flexibly process stimuli elementally or configurally. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2005
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