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Stimulus awareness is necessary for both instrumental learning and instrumental responding to previously learned stimuli

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posted on 2024-01-16, 13:21 authored by Lina I Skora, Ryan ScottRyan Scott, Gerhard Jocham
Instrumental conditioning is a crucial part of adaptive behaviour, allowing agents to selectively interact with stimuli in their environment. Recent evidence suggests that instrumental conditioning cannot proceed without stimulus awareness. However, whether accurate unconscious instrumental responding can emerge from consciously acquired knowledge of the stimulus-action-outcome contingencies is unknown. We studied this question using instrumental trace conditioning, where participants learned to make approach/avoid decisions in two within-subject modes: conscious (stimuli in plain view) and unconscious (visually masked). Both tasks were followed by an unconscious-only instrumental performance task. We show that even when the contingencies are reliably learned in the conscious mode, participants fail to act upon them in the unconscious responding task. We also replicate the previous results that no instrumental learning occurs in the unconscious mode. Consequently, the absence of stimulus awareness not only precludes instrumental conditioning, but also precludes any kind of instrumental responding to already known stimuli. This suggests that instrumental behaviour is entirely supported by conscious awareness of the world, and corroborates the proposals that consciousness may be necessary for adaptive behaviours requiring selective action.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Cognition

ISSN

0010-0277

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

244

Article number

105716

Department affiliated with

  • Psychology Publications

Institution

University of Sussex

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes