Ambiguity drives higher-order Pavlovian learning.

ABSTRACT: In the natural world, stimulus-outcome associations are often ambiguous, and most associations are highly complex and situation-dependent. Learning to disambiguate these complex associations to identify which specific outcomes will occur in which situations is critical for survival. Pavlovian occasion setters are stimuli that determine whether other stimuli will result in a specific outcome. Occasion setting is a well-established phenomenon, but very little investigation has been conducted on how occasion setters are disambiguated when they themselves are ambiguous (i.e., when they do not consistently signal whether another stimulus will be reinforced). In two preregistered studies, we investigated the role of higher-order Pavlovian occasion setting in humans. We developed and tested the f

SUBMITTER: Zbozinek TD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9491594 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature