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Published on: March 30, 2016
The role of contingency awareness in single-cue human eyeblink conditioning
Gabrielle Weidemann1, Erin Best, Jessica C Lee
1School of Social Sciences and Psychology, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, 2751, Australia. G.Weidemann@uws.edu.au
Abstract:
Single-cue delay eyeblink conditioning is presented as a prototypical example of automatic, nonsymbolic learning that is carried out by subcortical circuits. However, it has been difficult to assess the role of cognition in single-cue conditioning because participants become aware of the simple stimulus contingency so quickly. In this experiment (n = 166), we masked the contingency to reduce awareness. We observed a strong relationship between contingency awareness and conditioned responding, with both trace and delay procedures. This finding suggests that explicit associative knowledge and anticipatory behavior are regulated by a coordinated system rather than by functionally and neurally distinct systems.
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