User:Trventuraa/Human Contingency Learning/draft

Description

Human contingency learning (HCL) is the observation that people tend to acquire knowledge based on whichever outcome has the highest probability of occurring from particular stimuli (Schmidt, 2012). In other words, individuals gather associations between a certain behaviour and a specific consequence (Skinner, 1938). It has its similarities to operant conditioning, which is a learning process where a behaviour can be encouraged or discouraged through praise or punishment. Thus, human contingency learning can be recognised as a cognitive process, a variation of operant conditioning (Schmidt, 2012).

Participants in many studies of human contingency learning are given information about a number of situations where certain stimuli and certain responses are either absent or present. They are then told to determine the extent to which the stimuli are related to the responses (De Houwer & Beckers, 2002). For example, in a trial, participants are provided a list of foods that a fictitious person has eaten (the stimulus) along with details about whether the patient experienced any allergic reactions after the food (the response) (De Houwer & Beckers, 2002). The participants will apply this information to determine the probability of that same patient acquiring an allergic reaction after consuming a different set of foods.

Human contingency learning mostly inherits the fundamental concepts from classical conditioning (and some from operant conditioning), which primarily focused on studying animals. It expands upon these studies and attributes them more to human behaviour (Shanks, 2007).

It is an important ability to human survival as it allows organisms to predict and control events in the environment (De Houwer & Beckers, 2002).

Theoretical Roots

Origins of Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning

Human contingency learning has its roots connected to classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning; called Pavlovian conditioning after the Russian psychologist, Pavlov. It is a type of learning through association where two stimuli are linked to create a new response in an animal or person (McLeod, 2018). The popular experiment is known as Pavlov’s dogs where food was provided to the dogs along with repeated sounds of a bell; the food, which was the initial stimulus, would cause the dog to salivate. The pairing of the bell with the food, which was the initial stimulus, resulted in the former becoming the new stimulus even after the food was excluded from the pairing. This therefore meant that the bell (the new stimulus) would invoke an unconditional response from the dogs without the presence of the initial stimulus since the dogs anticipate the arrival of food.

At a procedural level, human contingency learning experiments are very similar to the classical conditioning testing methods. Stimuli consisting of cues and outcomes are paired and the decisions of the participants in response to the stimuli (contingency judgements) are assessed (De Houwer & Beckers, 2002).

Origins of Operant Conditioning

Human contingency learning also has strong similarities with operant conditioning (Schmidt, 2012). As mentioned, its method of learning involves the use of praise or punishment of a certain behaviour. Once certain behaviours indicate a certain consequence, the individual in testing will make an association between the behaviour and consequence. This theory was developed by B.F. Skinner and explored in his 1938 book “The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis”.

The research continued based on the work of Thorndike’s law of effect, which states that a particular behaviour persists if pleasant consequences are repeated. The contrary is also true, where if there are unpleasant consequences to a certain behaviour, it is unlikely for that behaviour to continue (Thorndike, 1898).

Concepts and Theories behind Human Contingency Learning

With all theories, providing an introduction to the fundamental concepts and frameworks underlying the overall cognitive process is necessary. It should be noted however that some theories are undergoing testing as the methods employed to test the hypotheses are still inconclusive and are subject to review.

Associative Theories

Pathway Strengthening (Rescorla-Wagner Model)

One of the main cognitive theories that is inherent in human contingency learning is pathway strengthening. It has been proposed as the mechanism that underlies the gradual learning tendencies to respond to certain inputs (Sternberg & McClelland, 2012). Pathway strengthening is when performance is attributed to the strengthening of pathways linking cue representations with the representation of outcomes (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972). It is a model of classical conditioning where learning is attributed to associations between conditioned and unconditioned stimuli (Abbott, 2016).

Stronger pathways allow for more efficient and automatic responses (Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, 1990). When participants are faced with fast-paced sequence-learning tasks, pathway-strengthening is accounted for in the gradual speeding of their responses (Cleeremans & McClelland, 1991).

Associative models assume that the knowledge of a cue-outcome relationship is represented by an associative bond and that the bond should function similarly even without precise semantics of a test question (Shanks, 2007).

Application

Human contingency learning has been studied under different types of models or paradigms. Some paradigms involve participants being asked to assess the associative relations between stimuli when presented with a combination of stimuli (Schmidt, 2012). Particularly in humans, many different studies have been undertaken, such as judgements to determine a relationship between correlated stimuli, judgements on predictive relationships between stimuli and responses while measuring the response time and accuracy gains that may differ between each stimuli and response pair (Schmidt, 2012).

Some applications of human contingency learning are summarised as follows.

Generalisation

The importance of applying associative theories to the context of human learning is due to the human behaviour of generalisation (Shanks, 2007). Generalisation is when an association between a stimulus and a response will be generalised or applied superficially to a stimulus that is similar to the initial one (Wheeler, Amundson, & Miller, 2006). To expand upon this further, when making a learned association concerning a stimulus A, the strength of that association can be dispensed across a number of elements that make up A. When introducing a different object B, if it carries some of the same elements that A contained, the degree to which B inherits stimulus A’s associative strength will depend upon the amount of similarities that they both share (Shanks, 2007). The assumption of elements is made because the stimuli can be seen as “compounds composed of constituent elements (i.e., representational features)” (Rudy & Wagner, 1976).