Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-2c8nx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-24T19:13:05.813Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Latent inhibition and learned irrelevance in human contingency learning

from Current topics in latent inhibition research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

By
M. E. Le Pelley  and
Mia Schmidt-Hansen
Edited by
Robert Lubow  and
Ina Weiner
Robert Lubow
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
Ina Weiner
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
Get access

Summary

Introduction

To say that latent inhibition (LI) is a well-established phenomenon of animal conditioning is a serious understatement. Since its first demonstration 50 years ago, the finding of a retardation in conditioning following nonreinforced preexposure to a stimulus has been reported countless times across species from sheep to snails, and from goats to goldfish.

Given the ubiquity of LI in animal conditioning, and the suggestion that, under some circumstances at least, a common associative mechanism might also underlie human contingency learning (the acquisition of knowledge about the predictive relationship between a cue and an outcome; Dickinson, Shanks, & Evenden,1984), we might expect a search of the contingency learning literature to reveal many demonstrations of LI in humans. The conclusions to be drawn from such a search depend largely on whether an empirical or theoretical approach to LI is taken.

An empirical approach to LI

If we define LI empirically, as the experimental observation of a retardation in the development of conditioned responding to a stimulus resulting from nonreinforced preexposure to that stimulus, then we must conclude that LI has been demonstrated many times in human contingency learning (e.g. De la Casa, Ruiz, & Lubow, 1993b; Ginton, Urca, & Lubow, 1975; Gray, N.S., et al., 2001; Lubow, Ingberg-Sachs, Zalstein-Orda, & Gewirtz, 1992). For example, during Ginton et al.'s preexposure phase, participants were required to report the number of repetitions of a list of nonsense-syllables (a masking task; see below). The to-be-conditioned stimulus (CS), a burst of noise, was interspersed throughout presentation of this list.

Type
Chapter
Information
Latent Inhibition
Cognition, Neuroscience and Applications to Schizophrenia
 , pp. 94 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Allan, L. G., & Jenkins, H. M. (1980). The judgment of contingency and the nature of the response alternatives. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 34, 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, A. G., & Mackintosh, N. J. (1979). Preexposure to the CS alone, or CS and US uncorrelated: latent inhibition, blocking by context or learned irrelevance?Learning and Motivation, 10, 278–294.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, A. G., & Mercier, P. (1982). Extinction of the context and latent inhibition. Learning and Motivation, 13, 391–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baruch, I., Hemsley, D. R., & Gray, J. A. (1988). Differential performance of acute and chronic schizophrenics in a latent inhibition task. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 176, 598–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, C. H., Wills, S. J., Oakeshott, S. M., & Mackintosh, N. J. (2000). Is the context specificity of latent inhibition a sufficient explanation of learned irrelevance?Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53B, 239–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bonardi, C., Graham, S., Hall, G., & Mitchell, C. (2005). Acquired distinctiveness and equivalence in human discrimination learning: evidence for an attentional process. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 88–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bonardi, C., & Ong, S. Y. (2003). Learned irrelevance: a contemporary overview. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56B, 80–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bouton, M. E. (1993). Context, time, and memory retrieval in the interference paradigms of Pavlovian learning. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 80–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Channell, S., & Hall, G. (1983). Contextual effects in latent inhibition with an appetitive conditioning procedure. Animal Learning & Behavior, 11, 67–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casa, L. G., Ruiz, G., & Lubow, R. E. (1993a). Amphetamine-produced attenuation of latent inhibition is modulated by stimulus preexposure duration: implications for schizophrenia. Biological Psychiatry, 33, 707–711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casa, L. G., Ruiz, G., & Lubow, R. E. (1993b). Latent inhibition and recall/recognition of irrelevant stimuli as a function of preexposure duration in high and low psychotic-prone normal subjects. British Journal of Psychology, 84, 119–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickinson, A., Shanks, D. R., & Evenden, J. L. (1984). Judgement of act-outcome contingency: the role of selective attribution. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 36A, 29–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Escobar, M., Arcediano, F., & Miller, R. R. (2003). Latent inhibition in human adults without masking. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 1028–1040.Google ScholarPubMed
Evans, L. H., Gray, N. S., & Snowden, R. J. (2007). A new continuous within-participants latent inhibition task: examining associations with schizotypy dimensions, smoking status and gender. Biological Psychology, 74, 365–373.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
George, D. N., & Pearce, J. M. (1999). Acquired distinctiveness is controlled by stimulus relevance not correlation with reward. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 25, 363–373.Google Scholar
Ginton, A., Urca, G., & Lubow, R. E. (1975). The effects of preexposure to a nonattended stimulus on subsequent learning: latent inhibition in adults. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 5, 5–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, S., & McLaren, I. P. L. (1998). Retardation in human discrimination learning as a consequence of pre-exposure: latent inhibition or negative priming?Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 51B, 155–172.Google Scholar
Gray, J. A. (1998). Integrating schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 24, 249–266.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gray, N. S., Fernandez, M., Williams, J., Ruddle, R. A., & Snowden, R. J. (2002). What schizotypal dimensions abolish latent inhibition?British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41, 271–284.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gray, N. S., Pickering, A. D., Hemsley, D. R., Dawling, S., & Gray, J. A. (1992). Abolition of latent inhibition by a single 5 mg dose of d-amphetamine in man. Psychopharmacology, 107, 425–430.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gray, N. S., & Snowden, R. J. (2005). The relevance of irrelevance to schizophrenia. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 29, 989–999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gray, N. S., Williams, J., Fernandez, M., et al. (2001). Context dependent latent inhibition in adult humans. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section B – Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 54, 233–245.Google ScholarPubMed
Hall, G. (1991). Perceptual and Associative Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hulstijn, W. (1978). The orienting reaction during human eyelid conditioning following preconditioning exposures to the CS. Psychological Research, 40, 77–88.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kaye, H., & Pearce, J. M. (1987). Hippocampal lesions attenuate latent inhibition and the decline of the orienting response in rats. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 39B, 107–125.Google Scholar
Killcross, A. S., Dickinson, A., & Robbins, T. W. (1994). Amphetamine-induced disruptions of latent inhibition are reinforcer mediated: implications for animal models of schizophrenic attentional dysfunction. Psychopharmacology, 115, 185–195.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kruschke, J. K. (1996). Dimensional relevance shifts in category learning. Connection Science, 8, 225–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruschke, J. K. (2001). Towards a unified model of attention in associative learning. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 45, 812–863.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pelley, M. E., & McLaren, I. P. L. (2003). Learned associability and associative change in human causal learning. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56B, 68–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pelley, M. E., Reimers, S. J., Calvini, G., et al. (submitted). Stereotype formation: biased by association. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
Pelley, M. E., Schmidt-Hansen, M., Harris, N. J., Lunter, C. M., & Morris, C. S. (in press). Disentangling the attentional deficit in schizophrenia: pointers from schizotypy. Psychiatry Research.
Lipp, O. V. (1999). The effect of stimulus specificity and number of pre-exposures on latent inhibition in an instrumental trials-to-criterion task. Australian Journal of Psychology, 51, 77–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Livesey, E. J., Harris, I. M., & Harris, J. A. (2009). Attentional changes during implicit learning: signal validity protects a target stimulus from the attentional blink. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 408–422.Google ScholarPubMed
Lovibond, P. F. (2003). Causal beliefs and conditioned responses: retrospective revaluation induced by experience and by instruction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 29, 97–106.Google ScholarPubMed
Lovibond, P. F., Preston, G. C., & Mackintosh, N. J. (1984). Context specificity of conditioning and latent inhibition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 10, 360–375.Google Scholar
Lubow, R. E. (1973). Latent inhibition. Psychological Bulletin, 79, 398–407.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lubow, R. E. (1989). Latent Inhibition and Conditioned Attention Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lubow, R. E. (2005). Construct validity of the animal latent inhibition model of selective attention deficits in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 31, 139–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lubow, R. E., Caspy, T., & Schnur, P. (1982). Latent inhibition and learned helplessness in children: similarities and differences. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 34, 231–256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lubow, R. E., & Gewirtz, J. C. (1995). Latent inhibition in humans: data, theory, and implications for schizophrenia. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 87–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lubow, R. E., Ingberg-Sachs, Y., Zalstein-Orda, N., & Gewirtz, J. C. (1992). Latent inhibition in low and high psychotic-prone normal subjects. Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 563–572.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackintosh, N. J. (1973). Stimulus selection: learning to ignore stimuli that predict no change in reinforcement. In Hinde, R. A. & Hinde, J. S. (Eds.), Constraints on Learning. London: Academic Press, pp. 75–96.Google Scholar
Mackintosh, N. J. (1975). A theory of attention: variations in the associability of stimuli with reinforcement. Psychological Review, 82, 276–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackintosh, N. J., & Little, L. (1969). Intradimensional and extradimensional shift learning by pigeons. Psychonomic Science, 14, 5–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, O., Claridge, G., & Jackson, M. (1995). New scales for the assessment of schizotypy. Personality and Individual Differences, 18, 7–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matzel, L. D., Schachtman, T. R., & Miller, R. R. (1988). Learned irrelevance exceeds the sum of CS-preexposure and US-preexposure deficits. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 14, 311–319.Google Scholar
Miller, R. R., & Matzel, L. D. (1988). The comparator hypothesis: a response rule for the expression of associations. The Psychology of Learning and Motivation, 22, 51–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, J. B., & Sanjuan, M. C. (2006). A context-specific latent inhibition effect in a human conditioned suppression task. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 59, 1003–1020.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oswald, C. J. P., Yee, B. K., Rawlins, J. N. P., et al. (2001). Involvement of the entorhinal cortex in a process of attentional modulation: evidence from a novel variant of an IDS/EDS procedure. Behavioral Neuroscience, 115, 841–849.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearce, J. M., & Hall, G. (1980). A model for Pavlovian conditioning: variations in the effectiveness of conditioned but not of unconditioned stimuli. Psychological Review, 87, 532–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perlmuter, L. C. (1966). Effect of CS manipulation on the conditioned eyelid response: compounding, generalization, in the inter-CS-interval, and preexposure. Psychonomic Science Monographs, 1, 271–286.Google Scholar
Rescorla, R. A. (1971). Summation and retardation tests of latent inhibition. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schwartz, R. M., Schwartz, M., & Teas, R. C. (1971). Optional intradimensional and extradimensional shifts in the rat. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 77, 470–475.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Siegel, S. (1969). Generalization of latent inhibition. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 69, 157–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Testa, T. J., & Ternes, J. W. (1977). Specificity of conditioning mechanisms in the modification of food preferences. In Barker, L. M., Best, M. R. & Domjan, M. (Eds.), Learning Mechanisms in Food Selection. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, A. R. (1981). SOP: a model of automatic memory processing in animal behaviour. In Spear, N. E. & Miller, R. R. (Eds.), Information Processing in Animals: Memory Mechanisms. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 5–47.Google Scholar
Weiner, I., & Feldon, J. (1987). Facilitation of latent inhibition by haloperidol. Psychopharmacology, 91, 248–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weiner, I., Lubow, R. E., & Feldon, J. (1988). Disruption of latent inhibition by acute administration of low doses of amphetamine. Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and Behavior, 30, 871–878.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, J. H., Wellman, N. A., Geaney, D. P., et al. (1997). Haloperidol enhances latent inhibition in visual tasks in healthy people. Psychopharmacology, 133, 262–268.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Young, A. M. J., Moran, P. M., & Joseph, M. H. (2005). The role of dopamine in conditioning and latent inhibition: what, when, where and how?Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 29, 963–976.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zalstein-Orda, N., & Lubow, R. E. (1995). Context control of negative transfer induced by preexposure to irrelevant stimuli: latent inhibition in humans. Learning and Motivation, 26, 11–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×