User:Erichoffner/sandbox

There is some disagreement between psychologists as to the questions of what exact conditions favor latent learning, if reinforcement is always necessary for learning and if a distinction should be made between learning and performance. There have been four common experimental designs in animal research on latent learning in which the research animal attempts to navigate a maze. The first is giving either no reward or a small reward and then introducing a goal object in the maze. The second is allowing the animals to explore the maze before introducing a goal object. The third is to introduce the goal object when the research animal is well fed and then again after fasting and the fourth is to introduce both desired and undesired goal objects. Subjects in the first three types of experimental designs have demonstrated latent learning more consistently than in the fourth. Latent learning seems to be demonstrated best when there is a complex task, the reward is highly desired, and there is no relevant goal object prior to a reward being introduced.

After Tolman and Honzik's original latent learning research in 1930, the role of reinforcement as a necessary condition for learning has been debated. The prevailing theories at the time were those of stimulus response association theories and classical conditioning principles discovered by Ivan Pavlov. These were supported by behaviorists such as B.F. Skinner who didn't agree with the maze setup as an accurate model for learning. Instead they proposed that the latent learning seen in the Tolman experiment and others could still be explained as the result of associative learning and reinforcement. Results seen in latent learning experiments continue to be explained in different ways between psychological schools of thought focusing on behavior versus cognitive processes.

Latent inhibition "refers to decrement in conditioning to a stimulus as a result of its prior nonreinforced preexposure." Studies show attention plays a role in latent learning involving the hippocampus as well as the mesolimbic dopaminergic and mesolimbic serotonergic neurotransmitter systems. Latent inhibition can be seen as a result of decreased attention to irrelevant stimuli. In visual spacial tests of search times looking at latent learning, times have been shown to improve with repeated trials even when research participants are not told to memorize the configurations shown in experiments. Search facilitation can occur due to a phenomenon termed contextual cuing. There has been some debate between researchers over if contextual cuing is an implicit process. If patterns are shown in a training trial followed by a test trial, no search facilitation is observed in training but is observed in testing, indicating latent learning occurred. Some experiments looking at search facilitation in spacial and non-spacial tasks support that working memory is necessary for demonstration of learning but not for learning to occur. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) has been used to look at several brain regions possibly involved in working memory and latent learning including the hippocampus and medial temporal lobes as well as a region at the junction between the left intraparietal sulcus and the transverse occipital sulcus.