Examining conceptual generalisation after acquisition, extinction, and reinstatement in evaluative conditioning.

Abstract

In evaluative conditioning, a neutral conditional stimulus (CS) acquires the valence of a pleasant or unpleasant unconditional stimulus (US) after the CS and US are paired (acquisition). Valence acquired by the CS can generalise to other stimuli from the same category. Presenting the CS alone can reduce evaluative conditioning (extinction), but evaluations can return after the US is presented alone (reinstatement). The current research investigated whether extinction and reinstatement generalise to other category members (generalisation stimuli, GS). In Experiment 1, evaluations generalised in acquisition after conditioning with one category exemplar, but GS evaluations were unaffected by extinction and reinstatement. In Experiment 2, we aimed to enhance generalisation by presenting multiple category exemplars during conditioning. This strengthened the generalisation of evaluations in extinction but not reinstatement. In Experiment 3, conditioning with multiple exemplars caused explicit and implicit evaluations (measured using an affective priming task) to generalise in acquisition but not in extinction or reinstatement. The acquisition and extinction of US expectancy generalised in all experiments, but the reinstatement generalised in Experiment 3 only. Overall, we found partial evidence of evaluative generalisation during extinction (but not reinstatement) and demonstrated that the extinction and reinstatement of US expectancy generalises in evaluative conditioning.