Inhibitory Learning with Bidirectional Outcomes: Prevention Learning or Causal Learning in the Opposite Direction?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Causal Inference
• Learning Theory

Background:

• Causal learning models often posit symmetry between generative (cause-effect) and preventive (cause-no-effect) relationships.
• Previous research indicates participants struggle to learn direct prevention with unidirectional outcomes.
• Bidirectional outcomes have been suggested to facilitate direct prevention learning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether bidirectional outcomes in feature-negative discrimination (A+/AB-) encourage direct prevention learning or an alternative "Opposite Causal" structure.
• To test if participants infer a generative relationship where a cue decreases the outcome, rather than directly preventing it.
• To re-evaluate prior findings on prevention learning with bidirectional outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted using feature-negative discrimination tasks with bidirectional outcomes.
• Participants' causal structure inferences were assessed through outcome predictions in summation tests and blocking paradigms.
• Analysis focused on participants who reported an "Opposite Causal" structure.

Main Results:

• Participants indeed reported inferring an "Opposite Causal" structure when presented with bidirectional outcomes.
• In Experiment 1, these participants showed the lowest outcome predictions for the preventive cue (B) alone and in summation tests.
• In Experiment 2, the preventive cue (B) successfully blocked learning of a novel cue associated with outcome reduction, particularly in participants endorsing the "Opposite Causal" structure.

Conclusions:

• Evidence for direct prevention learning with bidirectional outcomes may be misinterpreted.
• Participants may instead learn an "Opposite Causal" structure, where the cue generates a decrease in the outcome (excitatory learning).
• This suggests that prevention learning, particularly with bidirectional outcomes, might be driven by excitatory rather than inhibitory processes.