Emotional Overshadowing: Pleasant and Unpleasant Cues Overshadow Neutral Cues in Human Associative Learning

IF 2.1 Q2 PSYCHOLOGY
Jianming Zhu, Angela Radulescu, Daniel Bennett
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Abstract

When learning about stimuli comprised of multiple cues, humans and other animals tend to form stronger cue-outcome associations for more salient cues than for less salient cues. This phenomenon, termed overshadowing, has typically been demonstrated between cues that vary in salience because of differences in physical intensity. In this study, we investigated whether differences in the emotional valence of cues in a compound stimulus similarly led to differences in the strength of cue-outcome learning. Using a probabilistic categorisation task in which stimuli were compounds consisting of pairs of emotional or non-emotional cue images, we found consistent evidence for emotional overshadowing across both an initial exploratory study (N = 50) and a confirmatory preregistered replication study (N = 200). Specifically, both pleasant and unpleasant cue images tended to overshadow neutral cue images, but pleasant and unpleasant cue images did not overshadow one another. Moreover, across stimuli, the magnitude of differences in learning between cues was proportional to differences in their absolute emotional valence, suggesting that attentional capture by both positively and negatively valenced emotions drives overshadowing. These findings have implications for understanding associative learning in natural environments, where stimuli are frequently imbued with emotional valence prior to learning.

情绪阴影:人类联想学习中令人愉悦和不愉悦的线索掩盖了中性线索。
在学习由多种线索组成的刺激物时,人类和其他动物往往会对更突出的线索形成比不那么突出的线索更强的线索-结果联想。这种现象被称为 "阴影"(overshadowing),通常表现在因物理强度不同而显著性不同的线索之间。在本研究中,我们探讨了复合刺激中线索情绪价值的差异是否同样会导致线索-结果学习强度的差异。在一项概率分类任务中,刺激物是由一对情绪或非情绪线索图像组成的复合体,我们在最初的探索性研究(N = 50)和确认性预先登记的重复研究(N = 200)中发现了情绪阴影的一致证据。具体来说,令人愉快和令人不愉快的提示图像往往会盖过中性提示图像,但令人愉快和令人不愉快的提示图像不会相互盖过。此外,在不同的刺激下,不同线索之间的学习差异程度与它们的绝对情绪价位差异成正比,这表明积极和消极情绪价位的注意捕获都会驱动阴影。这些发现对于理解自然环境中的联想学习具有重要意义,因为在自然环境中,刺激物在学习之前经常会被赋予情绪价值:在线版本包含补充材料,可查阅 10.1007/s42761-024-00270-0。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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CiteScore
4.40
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